Whether you find it through mediation or sighing over tea or just turning all your devices off for five minutes, listening is an ancient lifeline by which we are awakened time and again. Once reawakened, we more easily find our way to each other, and so help each other live.

Listening reminds me how precious it is to be here at all. And so, listening is the first step to peace, both inner peace and the compassion that connects people.

Part of the blessing and challenge of being human is that we must discover our own true nature.

For being human, we remember and forget. We stray and return, fall down and get up, and cling and let go, again and again. But it is this straying and returning that makes life interesting, this clinging and letting go - damned as it is - that exercises the heart.

To be broken is no reason to see all things as broken.

In the way that I experience life, the physical world is really just the tip of the iceberg of reality. Whether it's trees or stones or water or animals or stars, everything has an ineffable interior quality.

Keeping a commitment to listening has led me to my own growth, beyond any imagined dreams I may have had throughout the years.