My lifetime listens to yours.
  —Muriel Rukeyser

Our experiences educate us to help show each other the way. Others' experiences, likewise, will help still others. We need to share our histories. There is no greater honor we can give one another than rapt attention. We each want to be heard, to be special, to be acknowledged. And recognition may will be the balm that will heal someone's hurt today.

A new day faces us, a day filled with opportunities to really listen to someone who needs to be heard. And the surprise is that we will hear a message just right for us, where we are now. A message that may well point us in a new, better direction. Guidance is always at hand, if only we listen for it. But when we are trapped in our own narrow world of problems and confusion, we scramble whatever messages are trying to reach us. And we miss the many opportunities to make another person feel special and necessary to our lives.

My growth is enhanced every time I give my attention fully to another person. And this process is multiplied over and over and over. I will be there for someone today.

From Each Day a New Beginning: Daily Meditations for Women by Karen Casey © 1982, 1991 by Hazelden Foundation. All rights reserved. Published 1982. Second edition 1991.