The more I read of Ourselves, the more I wish I’d been able to read it as a shy, insecure, dreamy teenager trying to find her place in the world. But in many ways, I still feel the same way as I did then, and Charlotte Mason’s words are alternately affirming or gently convicting. Her words on listening and speaking especially stood out to me in my reading this past week.
Society, if it be only a chat between two or three acquaintances, is a banquet to which each of the company must bring something. Young people often find this trying, because they feel they have nothing to say unless to one or two people with whom they are intimate. Let them take comfort; intelligent listening is a very good viand for this table, and, what is more, a viand to everybody’s taste. There are more people who can talk than who can listen. I daresay you have been amused in watching groups of talkers to notice that everyone is talking at once and nobody listening. To listen with all one’s mind is an act of delicate courtesy which draws their best out of even dull people. (pg. 76)
An attentive and deferential listener performs some of the highest offices of Sympathy; he raises and sustains the person to whom he listens, increases the self-respect of him who has done something, or seen something, or suffered something, which he wishes to tell. This is true service, because we all, ‘even the youngest,’ think too little of ourselves; and for that reason have not the courage of that which is possible to us. (pg. 98)
Listening comes much more naturally than speaking to me, but sometimes my quietness has elicited concerns or comments about needing to ‘come out of my shell’. So these passages have encouraged me that my ability to listen is indeed a gift and not a curse. But I know it is still an area where I can improve in, especially with my husband and children, because it is easy for me to be busy and distracted and not give them the full attention I should.
Miss Mason also had something to say about speaking too little in her chapter on Courage:
The Courage of Frankness is very charming. A certain degree of reticence is due to ourselves and to others; the person who pours out all his affairs indiscriminately is a bore; but, on the other hand, he who shows undue caution, discretion, distrust, is of a fearful and unbelieving spirit, and fails in the characters of the noble heart. Our motive is our best guide to the right mean in this matter. If we reserve our matters because we are unwilling to bore our friends with trivial things, it is well; but if we reserve them because we distrust the sympathy or the fairness, the kindness or the comprehension of the people we live amongst, we make a failure in Courage. (pg. 116)
I know I have often made this ‘failure in Courage’, whether because of shyness, a desire to not bore others, fear of offending or appearing boastful, or sometimes just plain grumpiness or pride. And many times when I do speak, I worry I’ve said too much or the wrong thing. It is a balance I constantly struggle with, and I need to pray for wisdom to know when to speak and courage to do it.
 of the Day: Listening & Speaking "Pinterest")
