Among the different kinds of people I know, two tendencies stand out.

With some of them, I’m regularly surprised to realise that they’re actually happy. You find that out one day, when, accidentally, they voice out something positive, or you catch them smiling, and you realise that they must be happy. You’re surprised, because if you only listened, you’d never know. I think those people are scared that talking about their happiness would make it go away, and so they can only share the grey and black.

And then there are the others, whom you look at and you’d think they’re always well. You never really worry about those people, because somehow, you feel they make it through. I think those people feel that talking about the greys and blacks in their lives would be off-loading on others what they should deal with on their own. And so they share happy things which sometimes strike the first kind of person as being frivolous and unimportant when weighed against the really heavy problems.

The truth, of course, is that both those people have both in their lives. As a friend though, it can be hard to know when something is serious or when it’s just temporary drama, or when something is wrong behind the positive outlook on things.

I guess that’s why listening, with the heart, remains irreplaceable.