Thought For The Day – Thursday 15^th February 2024

Listening is an important, and underrated, skill both in learning and life.

Do we attend and listen to, and hear, one another?  Do we really consider what is being said or communicated, whether it be through words, signs and symbols?   Or do we talk to, at, or over people?

Listening is especially important in problematic and challenging situations, locally, nationally and internationally, for it involves empathy, respect and understanding.

Listening does not always involve sound or speech.  It may involve  pictures, signs and symbols.

In listening, we are saying the person we are listening to, the other person, and their story, matters.

Listening meets people where they are.

Listening, which should be active to be meaningful. It involves attention, care, consideration, patience, time and humility. In many ways, listening is manners.

We communicate with and not to.

One activity that, to the hearer, involves the skill of listening is radio.

It is often said that radio paints the best pictures.

This week radio celebrated its 100th birthday.  The role of radio in informing, educating and entertaining was rightly celebrated.  Our former student, Greg James, who is such a leading light in radio, loves the medium.

Tuesday was World Radio Day, a day given added poignancy with the news of the passing earlier this week of the highly respected and greatly loved broadcaster, Steve Wright.

Today, the flexibility, and reach, of radio has been extended by the popularity of a plethora of podcasts, where people’s engagement with this most personal medium, where the listener feels the broadcaster is communicating with them, however they are, wherever they are and whoever they are.