The Kindness of Listening With Your Heart

"Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force.  The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward.  When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand."
― Karl A. Menninger 

I heard a lovely story today about a woman and a security guard who lives in her building.  The woman had shared a piece of bread pudding with the security guard after a party that she had hosted.  The security guard had asked her where it was from as his mother really liked bread pudding, and he wanted to get one for his mother for her birthday.  The woman gave him the name of the bakery.  A few days later, the security guard told her that the bakery had stopped making the bread pudding.  The woman went to the bakery and asked the manager if she would make her a bread pudding, which the manager agreed to do.  The woman took the bread pudding to the security guard and told him that it was for his mother.  With tears in his eyes, the guard told the woman that he could not believe that she had remembered.

What a lovely kindness -- to listen to another person with an open heart, and then to respond to the desires of the other's heart.