Introduction
January 1, 2020. A new day dawns, a new year, a new decade. A sense of hope for us, individually and collectively as a global community, that it will be a “good year.” In the words of Lale Sokolov, my dear friend and the man whose extraordinary story I told in The Tattooist of Auschwitz: “If you wake up in the morning, it is a good day.” Resolutions, both new and repeated from previous years, are made, perhaps whispered to our nearest and dearest. If we share our hopes and dreams for the year, they stand a better chance of happening, we are told.
The fireworks from the previous night, whether watched live or on a television set, have burned out, the parties have packed up, hangovers are being nursed in a variety of ways. I live in Melbourne, on the east coast of Australia. This year, our celebrations were tempered, our fireworks did not go off in many places. We still made our wishes, hopes, and dreams known, but these too were tempered. All of us were concerned about the bushfires that had started a week or so earlier and which were still far from being under control. In fact, they got worse. Much worse.
Over the next week towns were razed, people lost their lives, their homes, their communities. The impact on flora and fauna was devastating. Images went around the world of Australia’s two most iconic symbols—kangaroos and koalas—becoming the symbols of destruction and despair. New Zealand, Canada, and the United States sent firefighters to help in what was fast becoming a national disaster. Three did not return home to their families—they were killed when their plane went down during a water-bombing mission.
Celebrities around the world made considerable donations to help those affected. Small children gave up their summer holidays to sell cookies in the street, anything to help raise funds. The Royal Family sent their thoughts and prayers. Artists from around the world came to Australia, putting on the biggest live entertainment concert ever seen here. Millions and millions of dollars were handed over to the firefighters and to the charities set up to help those impacted.
For several weeks it seemed nothing could stop this monstrous blaze as smaller ones joined, charging from the mountains to the sea. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. In this case, the best was rainfall of biblical proportions. We all prayed for rain. And eventually, that is what happened. The heavens opened and for days it rained, helping to extinguish many of the fires. The deluge on parched soil also wrought havoc, causing mudslides in areas weakened by the loss of ground-stabilizing trees. Floods now ravaged small towns, killing the domestic livestock, destroying more homes.
The events in Australia in January 2020 resonated around the world, not because they don’t happen anywhere else, but because Australia’s southern hemisphere summer made it the only country burning as the new decade began. The northern hemisphere was still recovering from its own summer of hell. But worse was to come. It was during this strange and unsettling time that we first heard the word coronavirus, or COVID-19.
Since then, the world has changed beyond measure, beyond belief, beyond comprehension. We have all faced a pandemic of unknown proportions; the worst experienced by anyone alive today. It has brought stress levels to us individually and collectively like never before. Loss of jobs. Divorce. Illness that many may take a long time, if ever, to recover from. Death. With modern media, both conventional and social, few stories of tragedy go unreported. They are there, 24/7, for us to turn away from, then find ourselves turning back, such is our need to watch disasters unfold. We have pulled together, but sadly, we have also pulled apart. Curling up in the fetal position may be the only way some of us can blot out the pain of suffering emotionally, in our health, economically.
We have tried to take care of each other. After all, we are pack animals in a sense, drawn to human connection and contact. We have looked for joy in our changed living conditions. The smile of a young child oblivious to the pain of survival can be a huge tonic during an emotional low. The need to get out of bed and feed a pet has been for many of us what gets us through the day. Isolation can and has had a devastating effect on many of us. Where is my pack? Where is my tribe? Remember this: they are there, like you, waiting for the day when we can say, “We got through this together. We are stronger.” The wave of memes reminding us that our grandfathers fought a war for us while all we are being asked to do is sit on the sofa and watch Netflix makes a mockery of the real trauma of being forced to isolate for so many people. As Lale always said to me, “All you have to do is wake up in the morning.” Maybe we are now being asked to wake up in more ways than one.
Could this be our planet telling us to slow down? Has she not been screaming out to us for decades to take better care of her? How many warnings must she give us before we start listening to her? Many already have. In nearly every country there has been an ongoing battle, gathering force in the past couple of years, between governments and scientists over the impact of climate change. Amazing and inspiring activists, both young and old, are rallying the cause, telling those in power, telling all of us, that it’s time to shut up and listen to our planet.
COVID-19 is a common enemy that does not discriminate over religion, politics, gender orientation, race, or age and its effects are being felt across the world. And yet in the face of this unknown, new enemy, the changes we are making are having unexpected and positive benefits. Within only a few weeks of this crisis, we received reports of cleaner air and a reduction in pollution levels across China and many European cities. As we were forced inside, the skies became clearer, the rivers ran cleaner. We could look outside at what awaited us.
As I write this, I look out my window onto my street. Today, I see not cars and vans but people. Men and women, all ages, alone, together, many with young children, even more accompanied by dogs. They walk the street, they talk; I can tell. They listen. Their dogs bark at other dogs hidden from view by fences, their presence still being made known. Keeping their social distance, they acknowledge each other. Many stop and chat briefly. What do these interactions tell me? For the first time in living memory, we have a common purpose. A common enemy which will be defeated by us all doing our bit.
At the height of the lockdown, I watched as a van pulled up outside a nearby house and a young girl took from the back a box, filled with groceries. I smiled at the Hollywood scene of a French stick of bread poking out the top. I watched as she knocked on the door, placed the box on the porch, and stepped back. The elderly woman living in the house must have seen her coming, as the door opened immediately. I heard her saying, “Thank you, thank you,” over and over. I heard the emotion in her voice. If I had needed to speak at that moment, I would have struggled. With a big smile and a “You are very welcome, I’ll see you in two days’ time,” the girl danced back to the van.
Reflecting on this scene, I found myself thinking not about the elderly woman, but the young girl. Was she volunteering because she had lost her job? Was she a university student now denied her studies? Where had the groceries come from that she was handing out? Donated, or had she paid for them herself?
We can never know what is going on in other people’s—other than our families’ and friends’—lives. What makes someone carry out acts of compassion and generosity? What makes them act out, lash out, even abuse people trying to help them? I have seen this reaction many times, working in a hospital. My daughter and son-in-law, both police officers, see it too many times. Once again, I am reminded never to judge until you have walked a mile in someone’s shoes. Midway through the year, the brutal murder of George Floyd by a police officer in the United States ignited a wave of anger and the demand for recognition that black lives matter across the world. I am reminded of Lale’s words to me: “It does not matter what color your skin, your religion, your ethnicity, your sexual orientation. We all bleed the same color.” He got it. We are, all of us, human beings.
Right now, it is even difficult to offer our services as volunteers due to the need to keep our distance. Many want to, need to, reach out and help where they can. Isolation for people living alone is particularly hard until such time as that young girl I saw can enter the home of the elderly woman, help her unpack her groceries and put them away, maybe have a cup of tea and a chat with her. To be denied intimate contact is particularly hard—people need physical contact, a hug or a kiss from a beloved friend, family member, grandchild.
We are all going to have to take a step back, to hold our tongues in the coming months, maybe years, as we adjust to the impact of COVID-19. Unemployment and the associated issues it brings are already a major problem in all countries. Some career paths may not return, new forms of study and work will need to be sought. The impact on families will be immense, as we know from the Great Depression. However, we also know we can adjust, that we can seek out a different way of life. It may not be the same as it was, it may be better. Our global outlook will probably shrink for a while into the community and neighborhood we live in. That need not be a bad thing. As we reconnect and share our individual stories of how we coped during the pandemic of 2020, we will listen and learn, we will laugh and cry. It will be a new world and in many ways it will be a darker world, but it may also be a better one. This is a time to accept whatever lies ahead, to avoid nostalgia for the past and be open to the inevitable change that lies ahead for all of us.
However, can we not breathe in the fresh air and ask whether our industries do better when coming back online, to slow down their emissions with the aim of eliminating them altogether? If we can be smart enough to fight COVID-19, we can be smart enough to take this opportunity to strive for a cleaner planet. The extent to which COVID-19 is directly connected to climate change is gradually becoming clearer, and in a very short space of time we have opened our eyes to how quickly we can create a cleaner, safer environment. Perhaps it’s time for us all to stop and listen to what our planet is showing us. It can be repaired, but it can’t do it alone: we who inhabit it must work with it. We must listen to our planet.
Listening Well explores listening; how through listening to others we will find inspiration in the everyday lives of those around us.
The day I met Lale Sokolov, a few weeks after the death of his wife, he told me he hoped he could stay alive long enough to tell me his story. He didn’t want to be with me, he said every time I knocked on his door, he wanted to be with Gita. Those were the words he said to me each day, until the day he said he now hoped he could live for as long as it took for him to talk, for me to listen, so I could write his story.
I had no qualifications for this. What I did possess, though I didn’t think about it at the time, was my ability to listen. Truly, actively listen. Daily, I went to work in the social work department of a large Melbourne hospital. There, I engaged with patients, family members, carers, other hospital professionals: they spoke, I listened. Often, they didn’t know what to say, or how to say what they were thinking, feeling—yes, feeling more than thinking. It didn’t matter. By staying quiet, letting them know I wasn’t going anywhere, that I was there to listen, help if I could, often they found enough words. It was a privilege to be the person a stranger found themselves talking to and occasionally being able to make a small difference to their lives at a time of tragedy or trauma.
Now that privilege of hearing stories is sent to me by readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Cilka’s Journey, and Three Sisters. I am in awe of the outpouring of emotion shared with me, touched by the knowledge that telling Lale and Cecilia “Cilka” Klein’s stories has connected with so many, that reading their stories has had a profound impact on men and women, old and young, across the world and helped them in a dark moment of their lives. I sincerely hope that in writing to me and sharing the hope they have of waking up the next day, and the next, I continue to make a small difference. I don’t get to see or touch my readers, but I often put faces to them, picture them and the surroundings they describe. While reading people’s letters, I am listening to them too.
I have come to realize that listening is an art and my hope is that through reading this book, you may also decide to practice it more actively. I can promise if you do, you will be changed by the stories you hear—and changed for the better. Only by hearing their stories can we empathize with others, give them a voice, give them hope that someone else cares. We need to meet their courage in opening up and sharing their vulnerability with compassion and we must encourage them to do so again.
As you read on, I will share with you what it was like for me to listen to my beloved great-grandfather and the wisdom and fun that can come from listening to our elders. I will also talk about the importance of listening to children. I am a mother and a grandmother, and while I do not claim to have been the perfect parent (my children would agree!), I do think that I learned a thing or two from listening to my children and recognizing the validity of their thoughts and feelings, no matter how small or trivial they may have seemed at the time. I will share with you more stories of my time with Lale and what listening to this rare soul has taught me, as well as what I have learned from the many others who have found the courage to tell me stories of deeply personal and emotional periods in their lives. And I will also share with you the hardest lesson of all that I have learned: that above all, you need to listen to yourself.
In this book, I want to offer you some thoughts on how to listen actively. If you listen and learn, you just might find yourself in the position of offering hope to others. There is no beginning and there is no end in the circle of accepting and sharing these stories. No one has ownership of them, and no one’s experiences in life are more valid than another’s. They are unique to the individual, but by listening to them we can all become a little wiser, a little bit more compassionate and understanding, and we can enrich our own lives through what others have to tell us about theirs.
Other than a lifetime’s experience, I have no credentials for advising anyone on how to live their life or what paths to follow when confronted with more than one, nor do I subscribe to any faith or religion. All I can offer are lessons learned from my own personal good fortune in finding others prepared to tell me their stories—and my willingness to listen to them. Simple? Yes, it is. Try it.