Tag: community

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Rock Doubt

Well, at least we’re not Oakland. 

Small consolation at the best of times, I know. But it’s all I’ve got left to offer. 

If you’re a fellow Colorado Rockies fan, you get it. And if you’re a fellow Colorado Rockies fan, I am so, so sorry. 

One. Hundred. Losses. 

And beyond, naturally. The count stood at 102 when I wrote this and may have added one or two more by the time our final out of the year was recorded on Sunday. But as usual, it’s the big round number that stands out, the mark of infamy that no Rockies team had ever before reached. 

One hundred losses.

We’re not the first team to ever get here, of course. We’re not even the first one this season. The aforementioned Oakland A’s (111 losses at this writing) had a year that almost gave the tragic 1962 Mets a run for their money. Lest anyone forget, that was the year manager Casey Stengel uttered the immortal words “Can’t anybody here play this game?” 

So yeah. We’re not the worst of the worst of the worst.  

Um … yay?

It’s not just the bad season, of course. Everyone gets them eventually. It’s that there have been so many for so long, years where even “mediocre” has seemed like an aspirational goal.  It’s been 16 years since “Rocktober” now. Only four of those have seen winning seasons. The last one – admittedly, one of our best teams since those brief World Series days – was five years ago. 

But even there, it’s not just that it’s happened. It’s how. Get any group of Rockies fans together for longer than ten minutes and you’ll hear the same grumbles. “The owners don’t care. They don’t have to. People keep coming … they could lose every game and still make money.” 

I don’t live in the Monforts’ heads, so I can’t swear to whether that’s true, though I have my theories. (That’s half the fun of being a fan, after all.) But the fact that it’s even credible is toxic. 

After all, it’s a problem that goes beyond baseball. A problem that can be summed up in four words. 

“It’s all about me.” 

It fills the headlines every day. We see it in political showdowns that play poker with people’s lives and well-being. We see it in collisions at every level, where the fears or ambitions of a few can run roughshod over everyone else. During the height of the pandemic, it was an opponent almost as dangerous as the virus itself, when all of us had to remember that our actions affected more than just ourselves.

To be honest, we’re better at that than we give ourselves credit for. Most of us know that we should be looking beyond our own skin, that our neighbors matter. But like a person standing in a doorway, it only takes a few to get in the way of everyone else – not just by what they do or prevent, but by building a feeling of despair that accelerates the cycle. When you start to feel like nothing can be done, you’re less likely to do anything.

Heavy thoughts for something as light as a bad baseball season, I know. But the answer’s the same. Awareness. Hope. Determination. Not to give up, not to wait for things to magically get better, but to act. To remind the self-focused – in the owner’s box or in the nation – that we’re here and we won’t be taken for granted.

Interesting stat – out of all the baseball teams that have lost 100 games, about one in eight had a winning season the next year. Even the “average” mega-loser made their way back to the playoffs in about seven years. Change can happen … once there’s the willingness to do it.

It’s time to play ball. Push hard. And remember, we’re not Oakland.

It’s not much of a battle cry, but it’s a start.   

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Pouring Down, Rising Above

The rain just wouldn’t stop. 

When I lived in Kansas, I learned what that meant. Hard thunderstorms could make a mess. But steady, unceasing rain could be worse. When water has time to gather its strength, it transforms everything around it. Roads become rivers, concrete dividers become popcorn, lives become changed. 

I thought I knew that lesson. 

Ten years ago, I learned how little I knew. 

If you were here in September 2013, you know what I mean. If you weren’t, I’m not sure I can ever explain it properly. That handful of days belongs to another world, one where events flowed as ceaselessly as the St. Vrain and sleep was a rare and precious commodity. A world transformed. 

Longmont became a city divided. Lyons became an island chain. Missouri Avenue turned into the “Missouri river” as the water rose. Hover Street became impassible, though that didn’t stop some from sloshing their way across on foot anyway, struggling from south to north as emergency workers yelled at them to turn back. 

We held on as the water did its work. 

And even after the waters fell, we weren’t quite the same.

I don’t just mean the physical damage, though rebuilding from that became a years-long effort. Passing through the flood changes people. You don’t just let go of what happened, even if your home and family were well out of the floodway.

A few months later, when the spring rains began, I think most of us paused for just a moment. I remember watching the runoff pool and flow in a gutter near Longmont High School, unable to look away as my mind went back to higher waters and faster flows. 

Call it a reflex. A readiness. A ghost.

But we also carried away something else. We learned that we truly had neighbors. 

It’s easy to forget sometimes. Easy to ignore the lives that pass so near our own or even to clash with them. We divide, separate, watch the world with wary eyes.

But the good stuff never went away. Neighbors still exist. And when the waters rose, we found each other, reached out and helped. 

Even the St. Vrain couldn’t separate that.

It shouldn’t take a flood. Or a blizzard, or a wildfire, or any of the other traumatic moments that throw us into each other’s lives. But then, those are the moments that boil down all the choices and throw everything into stark relief. Where it’s clear that we either stand together or else we might not stand at all.

And so we reach for snow shovels. Or sandbags. Or masks.  One way or another, we reach for a neighbor’s hand and make each other stronger.

The world does its worst. And we rediscover our best.

And each time, I hope the discovery will last a little longer. It’s too important to rise and fall like a passing creek, full past bursting in a crisis and parched to the point of drought otherwise.

I said it at the beginning: sudden storms come and go, but steady effort transforms. That’s true of more than just rain. If we keep that sort of steady focus on each other, that daily commitment to our neighbors, we can reshape our world.

We just need to gather our strength. And not let up.

Long may we rain.

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Fire-Forged

It’s amazing how perspective can shift in a week.

Just a few days ago, the hot news in the headlines was the defeat of a soccer powerhouse. The U.S. Women’s World Cup team – two-time defending champions! –  made their earliest ever departure from the tournament, knocked out by Sweden in a game that came down to a fraction of an inch. For a team that had never finished lower than third, this was a Moment, one that could not be looked away from.

I’d planned to write about that moment. And then came the unthinkable words.

“Maui’s on fire.”

By now, we’ve all seen the photos, read the headlines. Lahaina burned to the ground. At least 80 dead as I write this, surely more now. Stark scenes from a place of beauty, transformed into devastation.

In a weird way, the news was all too familiar. Every Coloradan knows much too much about wildfires and the destruction they can bring. With just a spark in the wrong place, the whole grim parade of events can start anew: evacuations, containment efforts, choking air, the memories of a lifetime reduced to ash.  

It’s lit the Mountain West over and over, seared itself into our brains and our reflexes. The smell of smoke, imprinted on a state’s DNA.

This summer, we’d actually allowed ourselves to breathe a bit. After all, this year we had rain. And rain. And rain again. High rivers and flooding produce their own dangers, of course (don’t we know THAT well?) but at least one old enemy could be kept at bay for a while.

So when those old painful images reappeared, this time in the heart of an island paradise, it seemed surreal. Even that word doesn’t go far enough, I know, for those who have ties to Hawaii … an out-of-place nightmare made far too real.

There’s a lot that’s still ahead. There always is. Disaster only seems to know two speeds: heartbreakingly fast when it’s in the moment and painstakingly slow in the days and weeks and months after, as people try to recover, rebuild and learn just what the heck happened.

But as Maui’s story continues, there’s one other shadow of the past that’s been revived. A welcome one.

In every disaster, we re-learn the meaning of the word “neighbor.” Not just the person whose property happens to bump against yours, but the person who needs help that you can give. Time and again, we rise up to help someone else rise.

Some have given money. Some have given sweat. People have reached out to schools, to families, to animal shelters. And in every act, large and small, we do more than rebuild an area. We rebuild ourselves as well – the idea that wherever we are, whoever we may be, we share a tie that makes us one.

We recognize a common pain. And in meeting it together, we make all of us stronger.

It’s a Moment. One worth more than any championship.

The cameras will eventually move on. That’s the nature of news and of human attention. But it’s not the end of the story. And it should never be the end of that spirit.

We’re a community. A family. A team.

And whatever lies ahead, we’ll pass through the fire together.   

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Binding Chords

When it came time for the nation’s obituaries and tributes to sing out with David Crosby’s story, one note kept getting played again and again.

I don’t mean his role in co-founding two legendary bands. I’m not referring to his often stormy personal life and recovery, his engaging presence on social media, or even his Yosemite Sam mustache. All those got talked about, to be sure, and more besides … but one element kept rising to the top in story after story and quote after quote.  

 “Master of Harmony.”   

“… a harmony singer virtually without equal …”

“… his harmonic sensibilities were nothing short of genius.”

That’s a legacy I can appreciate.

If you’ve checked into this column before, you may have noticed that I tend to carry a torch for life’s supporting players. Like the stage manager who keeps a play moving behind the scenes. Or movie characters like Chewbacca who have to play their intentions with zero dialogue. Or the helpful neighbors who quietly make an entire community work without fanfare.

In each case, they’ve mastered the art of harmony. And these days, it can be a rare gift indeed.

In music, harmony’s a balancing act. You need to support the melody without overwhelming it, to hear and provide the notes that will lift someone else up … or, in some groups, that will lift everyone up together. That’s an art.

Now I don’t want to portray Crosby as some sort of selfless monk. That he decidedly was not. But he had the ability to hear how one plus one could equal so much more than two. And coming from his often chaotic life, that harmony may have been all the more remarkable.

But as I hinted above, the art of harmony doesn’t have to stop with music. You don’t need to be a rock star – or even a folk rock star – to make it work. Just someone who can listen for a need and fill it, without needing to seize the spotlight.

Yeah, “just” that.

The challenge is that we live in a world where everyone’s a lead, or wants to be. Step online and every breath of social media is about promoting your own wants and beliefs. Hit the highway, and you’ll find a dozen cars who need your piece of the lane right NOW. And while it’s certainly important to take care of yourself, it’s easy to get sucked into looking no farther than your own skin. If my life is OK and normal, then that’s what matters, right?

But taking that step back can make all the difference.  Three melodies all going their own way without heed for anyone else is a recipe for discord. But when the same three musicians tune to each other and listen, the results can be more powerful than any one of them could have been alone.

In life or music, harmony doesn’t just help the lead. It helps the entire group.

I hope we all get the opportunity to learn that. After all, if rock-star egos can manage it for however brief a period, surely the rest of us have got a chance at getting it right.

It’s worth trying.

I just hope the mustache is optional.

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Blitzed

Only a game.

We invoke the words easily. In resignation after a hard loss. In disbelief when a player signs for millions. Even in frustration when uprooting a partner from the couch, AKA Fantasy Football Central. “Good grief, it’s only a game!”

But we’re not used to whispering them in shock. Not until last Monday, anyway, when reality hit harder than any linebacker. A player fell. A nation watched. And the bright lights of the NFL faded into the background. When the league said the game would stay canceled, no one was really surprised.

After all, it’s only a game.

And at a moment like that, so many things loom larger than the score.

**

You didn’t have to be a Buffalo Bills fan to feel it. I’ve never been within 100 miles of Buffalo. My wife barely follows football at all. Both of us were stunned when Damar Hamlin collapsed from an on-field cardiac arrest. We had a lot of company.

After all, sports has a way of insulating us from reality. It’s entertainment, and like any good movie, play or TV show, it plunges us into another world for a couple of hours. Life’s frustrations fall away for a little while, subsumed in the action.

But once in a while, the walls don’t hold.

Maybe it’s an earthquake. Or an attack. Or a young man abruptly going down like his strings were cut. Whatever the cause, reality breaks the film, stops the play, shakes us out of the dream. We get reminded that we’re not watching a video game. That the helmets and numbers are people, as vulnerable in some ways as any of us.

We’ve spent hours, months, years watching these people. But sometimes it’s only in these shattering moments that we really see them.

And that’s in a world of cameras and spotlights. When we walk back into our world, surrounded with everyday people instead of superstars … how much more do we still not see?

**

We all do it. Not maliciously, but we do. Faces in our life become like cars on the highway, a blur only noticed when one of them veers near our lane. We go through the routine, used to everyone playing their part, not really looking closely.

And then something happens to make us pay attention and … we look. We see the struggles below the surface, maybe for the first time. And we wonder how we could miss it for so long.

It shouldn’t take a crisis. But attention takes work. And it’s a work we often put off until we have to.

So this year, if you do nothing else, take a moment to see. Friends. Neighbors. Family. The stranger on the street. Look up from your own world and into someone else’s. Find the connection that makes us human.

It doesn’t have to be somber or grim. It may even lead to great joy or comfort. But it won’t start by itself. We have to be the ones to do it and to go where it calls.

That’s how we build a neighborhood. A community. A nation.

A family.

**

As I write this, Hamlin seems to be on the mend. It’s a relief, to be sure. And long after most of us have forgotten his name, I hope we remember the care and connection that the moment sparked in so many of us.

After all, it’s only a game.

And when we break out from our own sidelines, there’s a lot that’s worth seeing.

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Putting the Peaces Together

We shouldn’t have lost Bob McGrath this close to Christmas.

I know. There’s never a good time. But you know what I mean. Big Bird would understand.

If you or your kids grew up watching “Sesame Street,” you know Bob, who passed recently at the age of 90. Part of the adult cast, he was the music teacher with a gentle voice and a kindly manner. Sometimes he’d be introducing the latest “People in Your Neighborhood.” Sometimes you’d see him chatting, both out loud and in sign language, with his character’s deaf girlfriend, Linda.  Once, he famously helped explain the death of store owner Mr. Hooper – as much as anyone could, anyway – to a grief-stricken Big Bird, his own voice shaking as well at the passing of his real-life castmate.

In short, whether in good times or bad, he reflected a spirit of peace. The sort of spirit we celebrate now and really need more of.

I don’t just mean that Bob wasn’t violent. (You never got a lot of that on the Street, anyway.) I don’t even mean that he was quiet and soft-spoken. Peace means more than just “nobody’s fighting.” We’ve all been in uncomfortable situations where nobody’s arguing but nobody feels at ease, carefully keeping their guard up. Many parents know the moment when the kids are behaving with each other, but only because Mom and Dad are watching.

You have peace when you have community. Interconnection. Harmony in the most literal sense of the word: many different voices coming together to make a more beautiful chord. (As a good friend likes to point out, the old Greek word for peace comes from a verb that means “to tie” or “to weave.”)

You have peace when things are as they should be. Not because someone’s sitting on everybody else, but because everyone wants to help make them right. A world where … well, where you truly see the people in your neighborhood.

It’s not always easy. It certainly requires more than just a spirit of “If you don’t make trouble, you won’t get any.” Peace doesn’t do well in isolation. It needs someone to reach out to: to celebrate or console, to make right or support. It can soothe or call for justice, but it doesn’t just walk back into the house and close the door.

In other words, it’s a gift. Maybe one of the most important ones we can give each other, at this time or any other.

Bob’s character spoke to people where they were, whether that required ASL or the ability to connect with a 6-year-old. From what I can tell, the real Bob did exactly the same. People like that matter, especially in a day where so many chasms keep erupting.

And when they leave, that spirit doesn’t have to leave with them. It’s up to us to keep it going and help it spread.

Even when it hurts to remember that missing neighbor.

It’s fitting to end this in his own words, from the Mr. Hooper episode:

“You’re right, Big Bird. It’s … it’s …  it’ll never be the same around here without him. But you know something? We can all be very happy that we had a chance to be with him, and to know him, and to love him a lot when he was here.”

May that be said of all of us.

Peace, everyone.

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Throwing DARTs

Call the shot: asteroid, corner pocket.

That’s what kept running through my mind after we all heard the latest news from NASA. In an effort to sharpen Earth’s defenses against runaway rocks, the space agency recently slammed a spaceship into a test asteroid. The goal: to see if the rock could be bumped off course, a planetary billiards shot worthy of Minnesota Fats.

“This one’s for the dinosaurs,” one Tweet declared, one of many social media posts declaring “Revenge!” for T-Rex and its cousins.

No, it’s not exactly Hollywood. As NPR reminded everyone, our movie-makers like to solve the problem of planet-killer asteroids with nuclear weapons. (Right, Mr. Willis?) As usual, reality is a little more subtle. Just like fighting fire with fire, you fight motion with motion.

Nudges. Not nukes.

Not a bad course of action for life in general, when you think about it. We’ve all seen situations where the quiet conversation undoes the need for the shouting match, the soft answer that turns away wrath. On a larger scale, politics happens because we believe that words are better than wars … and breaks down when we forget that fact.

But there’s a second part to this, too. NASA hasn’t forgotten it. We shouldn’t either.

Without awareness, the best nudge in the world is doomed to fail.

We’re great at watching the depths of interstellar space. But our own backyard has some blind spots. Every so often, we’ll see a story about a near-miss asteroid that surprised us from out of the sun, like the Red Baron ambushing Snoopy. One rock the size of a football field missed us in 2019 by about 43,000 miles – about one-fifth the distance to the moon – and wasn’t seen until after the fact. A smaller one the next year passed us by 1,800 miles; we noticed six hours later.

Moments like that are why NASA plans to launch a new Space Surveyor telescope in a few years to help keep an eye on lower earth orbit. They’re also a good reminder for the two simple words that we’re so bad at: pay attention.

On the sidewalk, it can mean a trip or a collision because someone’s eyes were on their phone instead of their surroundings.

On the highway, a moment’s lapse of attention can have horrifying consequences.

On a larger scale, early detection of a crisis – from hurricanes to viruses – can save lives. Ignoring the warnings or failing to see them can be disastrous.

We can all chime in with our personal examples, of course. Maybe it’s something spotted during a bit of home maintenance that saved a repair later. Or a symptom noticed and checked out before it became something worse. Or even just learning about a friend’s troubles in time to lend a hand and a heart.

You can’t help what you don’t know.

Granted, our attention can’t be everywhere. A lot of alarms go off around the world in the course of a day (just ask TV news). Trying to keep every last one in mind is a recipe for anxiety and despair. There needs to be judgment as well as awareness.

But we can’t walk blind. Not to our surroundings. Not to our neighbors. Certainly not to our world.

It’s a balancing act. But a vital one. And working together, with open eyes and a light touch, we can help each other make it.

No, it’s not easy. But it’s worth the shot.

And if we aim it right, we just might hit the pocket.

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Through the Fire

When I write this column, two days pass before it appears in print. That makes some topics risky. Anything that’s still in motion can make 600 words obsolete in the blink of an eye.

But on this day and in this place, there’s no avoiding the Marshall Fire.

Boulder County passed from one year to the next in a burst of fire and ice. And no one could look away. The December wildfire – December! – shot around the world at the speed of news, one last piece of horror in a year beyond belief.

But when a disaster hits close to home, it’s more than just news.

It’s realizing you know the hospital that’s evacuating. Or the animal shelter that’s in the line of fire. It’s the sudden memory of how many friends live nearby and the discovery of how many more you didn’t know about.

Who’s safe? What’s been lost? Can anyone do something? The questions race, the answers crawl. And the images burn our hearts and souls.

We hold to hope. Even as we fear to.

And sometimes, beyond belief, the hope holds.

On Saturday morning, one person was missing. One. In a fire that may have swallowed over a thousand homes. That’s staggering.

I’m not ringing bells yet. Even if that’s the final toll, one person is still too many when the person is yours. I hope and pray that by the time this appears in print, everyone has made it to safety.

And I’m thankful beyond words that so many already have.

I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose. We know disasters here. We know what to do. The details differ, but the essentials remain the same whether we’re facing fire or flood, blizzard or pandemic:

  1. Be aware of what’s going on.
  2. Don’t try to “ride it out” – take active steps to protect your safety.
  3. Help your neighbor.

Yes, you can do everything right and still have things go wrong. But the more people that do it, the less gets left to chance.

And when the fires came, so many did the right thing.

They listened. They left without hesitation. They helped others who might not have been able to flee on their own: friends, family, animals. Those not in the danger zone helped make a landing space for those escaping it.

And together, they carried through.

No. Together, WE carried through.

In a time of uncertainty, that’s a heck of a foundation to build on.

It’s here that I have to bring up Betty White, the beloved actress who died New Year’s Eve, less than three weeks away from her 100th birthday. (I promise, this is relevant.) As so many shared their memories and sadness, a Twitter comment pointed out a lesson to be learned: live your life so that, even if you live to 99, everyone will say the time was still too short.

In the midst of fire and fear, I think we’re seeing a lot of people living that sort of life already.

Thank you all. For raising up. For reaching out. And for holding so much together when the world tries to tear it apart.

I can’t see the future. Heck, I can’t even see Monday’s paper. But on this day and in this place, I can see the light you share.

And that’s something that will never be obsolete.

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Stream of Second Chances

Smart phones have found their Timex moment

I realize that I just dated myself with that one. Anyone under the age of 30 who recognizes the phrase “It takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’” is probably either a serious YouTube fanatic or a time traveler in disguise. But how else do you describe the super-powered phone of Jordan Miezlaiskis?

According to UPI, Miezlaiskis was up in Canada last year to celebrate her brother’s birthday when she dropped her phone into the fast-moving Chippewa River, where it quickly vanished  from sight. Worse yet, her brother died a short while later that year – and naturally, the last photos she had of him had been on that phone.

So far, it sounds like 2020, right?

But here’s the thing. Miezlaiskis returned to Canada this summer to remember her brother, and a Facebook message from a stranger popped up. Usually, social media messages from strangers are a little dodgy … but this one had amazing news. While diving near Chippewa Falls, he and his brother had found her phone.

Even more amazing, it still worked.

“(The photos) just popped up like nothing,” she told UPI. “It was wild. The phone had been underwater for a year in 12 feet of water and it was as if nothing happened.”

If someone hasn’t signed her up for a commercial by now, then the American advertising industry is really asleep at the switch.

That one stayed with me, even after the few moments it took to chuckle and shake my head in amazement. After all, we’ve all been there. We’ve all had the screw-up that seemed irreparable, the moment we would give anything to take back.

So it’s kind of nice to remember that, every once in a while, second chances exist. That not all mistakes have to be forever.

And those weird odds get just a little better if you face them with some friendly help.

When I was still newly married, I went on a feature assignment at the Arkansas River near Garden City, Kansas. Usually running at a trickle at the best of times, it had real water in it that day due to a reservoir release, so a photographer and I had traveled thereto meet with some folks who were boating down the stream while they could. Not a world-shaking story, but a fun chat and some good pictures.

As I started to drive the two of us back, my car hit an area of soft sand and bottomed out. The photographer and I got out to try to push it free … and my wedding ring, which still fit a little loosely, slipped off my finger and disappeared into the sand.

Panic does not begin to describe my mood. I tried to dig in but couldn’t see anything. Worse, the sand itself was so loose that I feared I was pushing the ring deeper with every attempt. I stared, frozen.

The photographer then knelt down and began to pick gently through the grains with her small hands and careful fingers. Nothing … nothing … wait …

There.

A friend’s patience had literally struck gold.

Small treasures like rings and phones may not seem like much in a cosmic sense. But they carry a heart. And when we each look after the heart of our neighbor, the world gets a little better. Maybe in small ways. Maybe in life-saving ones. (After all, what has this last year and a half been if not a constant reminder to look out for your neighbor?)

 If you’ve been that friend, thank you. If you’ve been helped by that friend, great. Pass it on. Make it better.

Together, maybe we’ll all keep on tickin’.  

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It’s All in the Accent

For most people, clicks and tweets are the heartbeat of social media.

For me, they’re a daily avian conversation.

“Hey, Chompy, how’s it going?”

“SHRIEK! SHRIEK!”

Don’t call the cops – the screaming’s not coming from the victim of an attack, nor from a hyped-up concert crowd. These are the excited calls of Chompy, our 16-to-17-year-old cockatiel (like his feathers, his age is a little fuzzy) who has become a Bird of Legend among our family. His mighty beak defies all but a chosen few who approach his cage. His piercing song could stretch to the farthest reaches of The Stadium We All Know Is Really Mile High – probably from our own living room.

And somehow, over the past few years, he’s decided I’m his best friend in the world.

This is usually an honor that gets bestowed on my wife Heather, who is one of life’s Bird Women. She has gathered feathered friends to her since childhood: finches, parakeets, everything short of a Long John Silver parrot (and I wouldn’t make bets against that someday). It’s a little like living with Snow White, but without the squirrels who do housekeeping.

Chompy loves her, of course. But I’m the one who gets him dancing. And maybe that’s because I’m the one who knows the tune.

I mimic. Often unconsciously. In my reporting days, I had to be careful during an interview or I’d start picking up the accent of the person I’d just been talking to. It’s a minor talent that’s been handy on stage, or while reading bedtime stories to Missy, or even just for little pranks. (Imitating a cricket during a quiet moment is a great way to make a room full of people do a double-take.)

During all the years that we had parakeets, I would do my own take on the clicks, pops and flowing whistles of their song.  It was a harmless way to join the chatter, and even after our last (for now) parakeet passed away in 2019, I kept doing it out of habit.

All I can say is, Chompy must have missed his ‘keet neighbors. Because Heather soon noticed that every time I whistled the song, our big ol’ cockatiel would hustle to the cage side nearest me and begin calling out, excitedly dancing and playing with his toys.

Mind you, I have no idea what I’m saying. It could be parakeet Shakespeare or the bird equivalent of “We’ve been trying to reach you about your extended warranty.” But regardless, it’s what Chompy’s listening for. It’s what he enjoys and responds to. And so, it’s what I give him.

It’s amazing how fast a friendship you can build when you try to speak someone’s language. Feathers or not.

I don’t just mean talking to people. We do that constantly, blasting our thoughts at every hour of the day through every medium at hand. Calls, texts, social media, even face-to-face (or mask-to-mask?) conversation … the barrage rarely stops.

But for all our expertise at shouting out – not unlike Chompy’s SHRIEK! – many of us are still learning to listen. And that means many of us aren’t really being heard. We’re talking to ourselves, but with a larger audience.

To really talk, we first need to hear.

That can be as simple as listening to the words they choose (do they say “I see” vs. “I hear you”) or as deep as listening for the story and emotions behind them. It’s the skill of the actor, not just reciting from memory but responding to the moment. Or the quality of the parent or teacher, hearing the things that aren’t being said and need to be known. Or the ability of the friend who wants to understand.

And it’s the gift that more of us need to possess.

When we take the time to understand, we can be understood. When we listen, we can be heard. It’s how we can be a “we” in the first place, able to shoulder a world’s challenges that need every one of us.

And that’s something worth shrieking about.