How to develop the skill of listening
✅ Positive Performer: Wetiko, Art of Listening, The Day I Almost Gave Up🍿
✅How do you listen? 🍿
It starts with mindfulness. . .
It begins . . . . ACTION > >
Please stay and read for at least 30 seconds, highlight, and comment! I will visit your article, and I will do the same. Remind me.
✅I am a Ted Talk speaker, I am a performance artist 🍿
and I have won dance contests. I know how to create a magical moment in front of an audience. Mostly, I taught for 30 years at a university.
My students loved me and took me to many classes, even if they were not English majors. Some are still my friends today. However, I have a secret. I listen with my heart, not my ears. The truth is that I am hard of listening, for I need hearing aids.
✅Heart-to-heart moments✅
I was once at a library in the rich part of town giving a talk, and it was going well. You know it went well when they won’t let you leave. They come up to the stage and talk and talk and talk. They start to laugh and smile and enjoy themselves.
This happens a lot. People ask for my autograph, they want my pictures, and they just stand there and will not leave. I am no one, but I know how to entertain. And I cherish those moments.
✅BUT. . . 🍿
✅Finally, I left, and when no one was around, I started to cry. I wanted to give up.✅
Why? Because I learned something that I didn’t want to hear. These rich people were going to decide who would be the next president: Donald Trump. They were going to give him a lot of money. I have nothing against rich people becoming president. If you look at how rich people only marry rich people and look at family trees.
All the presidents are connected just like the royalty in Europe were all connected. They marry each other. I wrote about dating a rich woman but broke off because she liked opera while I liked funk. She wanted to go to ballet while I wanted to go Salsa dancing. Don’t get me wrong, I used to be a ballet dancer but. . . .
However, when Trump started to say bad things about Latinos, that hit home. My grandmother was Latino, and I am part Meso-American indigenous Colombian / Peruvian. I speak Spanish and lived in Guatemala and Spain. My first girlfriends spoke Spanish and some were chola, meaning, they demanded respect or they would cut you. They were both sexy and macho. I even married a Colombian lady. I won a salsa dance contest voted by a Colombian audience. Retired, I will probably move to Spain soon to live.
What the audience liked most about Trump was, get ready, .. . his racism. They said he was just being honest. As an American, you have the right to be honest and say what you want to say. I am also part Japanese. During World War 2, all Japanese Americans were put in concentration camps. Were all Italian Americans and all German Americans put into concentration camps in America. Racism cuts into our veins, literally. It is a vampiric virus. The Indigenous Americans felt the Whites who stole America were mind vampires who suffered from this pandemic.
Sound familiar? They didn’t have the word vampire; instead, they called it Wetiko! They were thought to be cannibals. I call it mind vampires.
I say concentration camps because that is what the United Stated government called them at them time. We now call them internment camps, so see how we rewrite history a lot. After the war, those Japanese Americans did not get their properties back. Some of those lands became some of the most valuable lands used for making wine.
My Japanese American uncle reminded me to read Japanese America literature. In fact, he bought me books and told me to read them because I was dating Chola and had gang friends. I created a class called Asian American literature, the first in my state. I remember what my uncle taught me. I listened to him.
How to you get people to listen to you? Are you a good listener? Write in the comment section.
✅Thank you for reading.✅
Growing up in Los Angeles, I confused gang members when I stated to speak Spanish and then I code switched and started to speak Korean, pretending I didn’t speak Spanish. They usually left me alone. However, sometimes it was a draw. We confused each other.
Love is all there is. We are the same familia. Respect. Respect. Respect!
