How to be a SuperAger by Angela S Lucas

Author:Angela S Lucas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Panoma Press Ltd

CHAPTER SEVEN

Loneliness eased with the gift of listening

To listen, to be allowed in the inner places of another’s life is a privilege.

Can you recall moments when you longed for someone, anyone, to just listen to you? That someone didn’t need to have the answers to your situation, but, for you, just being able to talk, to be listened to in a non-judgmental manner, was a gift at a needful moment in life. Listening is an asset, and is a great gift for you to utilise at whatever stage of life you are at. To listen, to be allowed in the inner places of another’s life, is a privilege.

A brief interlude here – here is a thought and a useful tip for you when needing to summarise your writing. Perhaps you are writing your Sunday sermon, or writing an essay for your college tutor, or even writing an important email that has rather too much detail or information and you just can’t work out how to summarise so that you don’t let the reader get lost in a fog of words. Get on a bus is my advice! Listening to my fellow passengers I soon discovered how much of their life story could be covered in 15 minutes.

I also discovered that many older people, and by that I mean people from 50 years upwards, travel on the bus just to have some company. I also discovered that retirees, lost for the companionship of the workplace, would take themselves into the town centre where, equipped with a packed lunch and a book, they would sit on a bench waiting for someone to come along and be a willing participant in a conversation.

In this way I heard a lot of interesting detail about the evolving manner in which our town was built. There were people who moved from the east end of London, who although not many miles away were homesick for the familiar friendships and places. Other people had taken the opportunity to move to a new town to a new house on a new estate. Yet once the advantages had been explored, a longing for the familiar emerged, a longing for the neighbourhood friendships. And so it was that lonely people found a way to have a conversation with anyone who would listen to the stories of loss and felt isolation. To be a listener in such a situation was to offer a gift, and in the giving also to be enriched by the history embedded in the lives of others.

Being a careful listener might come naturally to you, but if not, it is a skill you can develop. In the final chapter of this book you will find details of courses available for those keen to learn.

It isn’t all about old people; let me tell you a story, a true one. One day, while I was sitting on the bus for a rather long journey, a young man alighted and sat in the only vacant seat, which happened to be next to an old lady.

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