Reading of the Month – June 2023

Know How to Listen, Especially to What Young People Have to Say

Human beings have very unequal habits, tastes, tendencies and temperaments and, therefore, it is common to observe a lack of tolerance and understanding in their relationships. These attitudes reveal a lack of ability to deal with the conflicting situations that arise in daily life, generating irritability, gossip, intrigue, lies, ingratitude, falsehood, hatred and many other negative vibrations of thoughts and manifestations of bad feelings, typical of those who still have reduced spiritual development.

Christian Rationalism guides people to maintain dialogue in the family group, in the work environment, in the social environment. Among so many human skills, conversation stands out, which is of fundamental importance in resolving the differences that always occur in everyone’s daily lives.

Human beings are unaware of the importance of knowing how to listen in everyday dealings, as most just want to talk, stand out, and never listen, reflect, when a simple dialogue could solve so much. If the opinions of those who speak are not compatible with those of those who listen, especially in discussions involving ideological, party-political, religious and even sporting radicalisms, disharmony, antipathy and enmities arise that are often definitive.

Therefore, we advise people to maintain dialogue in relationships, to develop, above all, the ability to know how to listen, with tolerance and understanding.

Everyone has their problems, including young people, who need to be heard at a stage of life that is really important in personality formation, as they are sensitive to the education that is given to them. Many parents think that, because they have little experience in life, there is no need to listen and evaluate what girls and boys say, forgetting that they are going through a series of transformations in their physical, psychological and social aspects.

Humans are evolving spirits on Earth in possession of a physical body. The spirit is eternal and gives life to the human body in the four stages of its existence. Therefore, parents have a lot to learn from their children if they already have good spiritual evolution, even if this evolutionary growth is somewhat contained in childhood and youth, but which is progressively revealed as they advance in age through the stages of maturity and old age.

So, parents who don’t listen to their children, who don’t pay attention to the transition from childhood to adulthood, run the risk of their children looking outside the home for the guiding support they don’t receive as they go through new experiences and quests. Unfortunately, young people who lack affection, understanding, and family dialogue are easy prey for morally disqualified people.

However, if adults have never tried to understand young people, it is always time to start listening to them in relation to their opinions and desires, in order to avoid misunderstandings that cause revolts, hurts and disappointments in shaken marital relationships, in the absence of dialogue between estranged parents and children, in the bonds of friendship broken by radicalism. For that, there is nothing better than putting Christian Rationalism into practice in your conversations, because our philosophy of life adds moral and ethical values in relationships, in addition to providing spiritual tranquility to the interlocutors.

Translation by Andreas Saint-Prix