I was at a songwriting event some years ago and a very entertaining songwriter from USA (Tom Kimmel) was giving us his wisdom on the subject of songwriting – and many other related subjects also.
He’s a bit of a philosopher in his own right and during the many question and answer sessions that we had he informed us that he liked the Buddhist way of looking at the afterlife – that is, none of us go to heaven until we all go.
This fascinated me and stuck in my head because it differed from the Catholic ‘them and us’ way that was taught to me. That is, all good people (us) go to heaven and all bad people who don’t repent (them) go either straight to hell, or to purgatory to suffer for a while before they are allowed into heaven.
If we, as part of our Catholic (or Christian) duty, assist those who are finding life difficult we might be advantaged. But if we don’t, we won’t be disadvantaged.
I suddenly realised that this parallels the design of our criminal justice systems, where we lock up people who we decide are bad and then – unless we have a personal stake or interest – largely forget about them.
The Buddhist thinking (or at least the way I heard it from Tom) implies that it is a requirement for us if we want to enjoy eternal reward to help those who may be struggling so they will be able to do the same.
In the project of helping our fellow humans who are struggling, listening significantly dilutes them-and-us thinking so prevalent in the world of helping others. This is because when we listen; truly listen, we touch in to many of our own failings and struggles that may have some influence in keeping us out of our heaven.
In fact, a great way of avoiding our own failings and struggles is to talk constantly and this is probably where the old saying empty vessels make the most sound comes from.
When all else fails in trying to help people who are struggling we can always listen. It is a truly wonderful and totally underrated skill – and is quite challenging for practitioners.