Saying Little and Being Smart

   Who is the most important person?

   What is a conversation worth?

   I read this verse in Proverbs 17 this morning (The Message):

"The one who knows much says little;
    an understanding person remains calm."

   The other day, as we were coming home from our Mt. Dora visit in Florida, we stopped in the town of Eustis. This was the place where my paternal grandparents lived when I was young, and where we visited on occasion to see them.

   Although it looked like their house was gone, we took a few minutes to go down to Lake Eustis, and there I spent some time just remembering the times I had been there with my granddad, fishing among the lily pads.

   As we walked out on the raised walkway over the water, I saw a man fishing, throwing his line out among the pads.

   As we stopped to chat for a moment, I asked him about fishing and his luck at it that morning. When I think about those few moments, and as I look at the picture now, I realize that I really did not care much about his luck or skill at fishing, I just wanted to tell him that I had done the same thing years ago. I wanted to talk about catching "shiners" to use as bait, and that I had experienced his activity.

   How often I look back on conversations and realize what I might have gained by treating the other person in that two-way chat as the most important one, not myself. What might I have learned? What impression might I have left? What opportunities missed?

   How much better to listen rather than talk, to really care about the other person and what they had to say?

   Who knows what thoughts might have been in that man's mind and what I might have learned?

   How much better to care than to spend the time trying to puff up myself in his eyes and to show what I knew about anything?

   How much better to think these thought then and not just now.

   Saying little and Being smart...