Dirty Greek - John Francis, Planetwalker

In order for us to maintain our way of living, we must, in a broad sense, tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves.

- Derrick Jensen

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Dirty Greek - John Francis, Planetwalker

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This makes me think very deeply about myself.

As I walked along the road, people would stop and talk about what I was doing and I would argue with them. And I realized that, you know, maybe I didn't want to do that. So, on my [27th] birthday, I decided I was going to give my community some silence because, man, I just argued all the time. I decided for one day, let's not speak and see what happens.

"Most of my adult life I have not been listening fully. I only listened long enough to determine whether the speaker's ideas matched my own. If they didn't, I would stop listening, and my mind would race ahead to compose an argument against what I believed the speaker's idea or position to be."

answer That was one of the tearful lessons for me. Because when I realized that I hadn't been listening, it was as if I had locked away half of my life. I just hadn't been living half of my life. Silence is not just not talking. It's a void. It's a place where all things come from. All voices, all creation comes out of this silence. So when you're standing on the edge of silence, you hear things you've never heard before, and you hear things in ways you've never heard them before. And what I would disagree with one time, I might now agree with in another way, with another understanding.

He didn't talk for 27 years. He just listened.