“For the art of living, you need to know the art of listening, smiling and being patient... always.” (Hermann Hesse)

“For the art of living, you need to know the art of listening, smiling and being patient... always.” (Hermann Hesse) But to talk, we have to know how to listen. And this is how we also calibrate the value of our words, the value of what we think, of our own feelings. And to do that, we have to have truly active listening. Truly present. Everyone wants to learn to speak. But so many need to learn to listen. And if we, adults, sometimes feel like we are not heard... imagine the children. Who truly listens to them? Who listens to what they say but, more importantly, what they don't say? As the Dalai Lama said: “by speaking you only repeat what you already know, but by listening, perhaps you can learn something.” We urgently need to stop killing creativity. To stop turning off the light of wanting to know more, of curiosity. Of wanting to learn. We need to follow the changes of the new generations and listen to them more, we must be fully aware that change really begins with each one of us. “We don’t have time for ourselves, or to live in the present. We are always stuck in the past or living in tomorrow. If we are at work, we are at fault because we are not with our family. If we are with our family, we are at fault because we are not at work.” “Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” (George Bernard Shaw) Because the difference between knowing how to speak, knowing how to listen and knowing how to be patient has to do with us, with our identity, with our language, with our culture, with our ability to not only know how to speak, listen and have patience , but also to think carefully, therefore, to be stronger. And we will really need to be stronger in the times that come. “We can believe that all life will offer us in the future is to repeat what we did yesterday and today. But, if we pay attention, we will realize that no day is the same. It is necessary to live every minute because there we find the way out of our confusion, the joy of our good moments, the correct clue for the decision we will make. We can never let each day look the same as the last because every day is different, because we are in a constant process of change.” (Paulo Coelho) Or as Martin Luther King said: “There is nothing more tragic in this world than knowing what is right and not doing it. How about we change the world starting with ourselves?”