The truth of others and of things...

The truth of others and of things

seems to reside not in my mind

but in the others and the things themselves.

In conversations I was privileged to have,

David Vishanoff, associate professor at the University of Oklahoma,

stressed, as I recall,

not studying books that tell how others think,

but listening (or reading)

and allowing others to explain themselves.

To put it more precisely,

as he does in his paper, “Sacrificial Listening,”

“Knowledge in the humanities is good

if it enables ethical human relationships

characterized by integrity

and by an ongoing process of coming to understand the other.”

These thoughts and his family's kind inclusion of myself and others

in their holidays and Sunday afternoons

exemplified to me an honest curiosity,

“a willingness to sacrifice the advantages of [thinking I already know],

so that the person I get to know is really the Other

and not a projection or mirror image of myself.”

I know or understand something

not when I've perceived

but when I've lived within relationship.