The Wise Old Owl

My great-grandmother, Granny-Great, had a poem she loved to recite. It wasn’t a lecture; it was only four lines.

There was an owl lived in an oak.
The more he heard, the less he spoke.
The less he spoke, the more he heard.
Why can’t we be like that wise old bird?

As a child, I assumed it was simply a clever rhyme. As an adult, and a parent, I’ve come to believe it contains an entire philosophy of life. Like most children, I thought wisdom meant having the answers, now I suspect wisdom has far more to do with asking good questions.

And sometimes I do find that the better thing is to say nothing, or a non-committal hum, when raising teenagers.

I’ve noticed that the wisest people I’ve known all shared a curious habit.

They listened.

Not politely.

Not while waiting for their turn to speak.

They listened because they were genuinely interested.

When you spoke with them, you had the distinct impression that, for those few minutes, there was nowhere else they wanted to be.

They listened with the ears of their heart.

That’s a rare gift.

Somewhere along the way, many of us begin confusing conversation with performance.

We’re busy composing our next sentence while the other person is still speaking.

We’re waiting for an opening.

Waiting to tell our story.

Waiting to prove we’re right.

Waiting to offer advice that no one has asked for.

We’re hearing words.

We’re not really listening.

I sometimes wonder how many arguments could have been avoided if someone had simply asked one more question. Monty Python once posited that if a giraffe could jump pound for pound as far as a flea, it could have avoided a lot of trouble. I've often thought the same principle applies to me: if I could listen proportionally as well as I talk, I may well have avoided most of the trouble I've caused.

Listening is one of the purest forms of generosity.

It says,

“For the next few minutes, your story matters more to me than my own.”

That’s harder than it sounds.

I know because I fail at it with embarrassing regularity.

Like most people, I enjoy being understood.

I’m still learning to discipline my mouth and my mind to be quiet.

Perhaps that’s why that little poem has stayed with me for so many years.

The owl becomes wise for an unexpected reason.

Not because he knows so much.

Because he keeps listening.

The more he hears…

The more there is to hear.

The less he needs to speak.

St. James, the brother of Jesus, offered much the same advice centuries ago:

“Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.”

Perhaps he had a lot of opportunities to practice listening. I can’t imagine being the brother of Jesus was an easy gig. Or maybe he and my Granny-Great had both been listening to the same owl.

The world doesn’t need more people talking.

It has plenty.

What it needs are more people willing to listen long enough to understand.

The more I hear…

The less certain I become.

The less certain I become…

The more curious I become.

And perhaps that’s what Granny-Great was trying to teach us all along.

Why can’t we be like that wise old bird?