It’s no better to be safe and sorry, it’s better to be brave. To listen is to be brave. Listening will save a life. Listening takes as much strength as wrestling a lion. 

When we listen, really listen, we bare a part of ourselves that mirrors the speaker. We ask permission to be granted passage inside their world and, once there, you see a person apart of the surface of this skin and bone. A person just like ourselves. Listening to others asks you to listen to yourself and offer your most truthful self in reply to courageous dialogue. 

I’ve had mates sit silently with me for hours, just listening, never once dismissing me, but listening as I fumbled through the mess of my own head and heart. In return, I’ve done the same and will always do so because I’d rather be brave than visit his grave. 

Know that this golden silence of listening will always be ended with, “thanks mate,” and once you’ve wrestled a lion, your own, you should be there to cheer on your mate as he wages war on a beast of his own. 

— Joel Jackson