The Ear, The Chortle, The Challenge, The Nodding, The Silence at just the right moments.

That's the ear of my friend Gary Bodenschatz.  I haven't seen him for a long time and this picture wasn't even taken during the conversation in question, but we once had a conversation over coffee at Muggswigz wherein his impressive blend of laughing with, but also throwing the curveball question at an unexpected time was precisely what I needed to revise my entire understanding of one of the myths - the life stories - that I had been holding on to. 

I started writing a long essay about it but it got longer than long and so I'm just saying that one of the things I value most in life is -- conversations that reframe a long held point of view and free you to understand things differently.

It's a gift we can never receive when we're in our own head. 

And it's a gift that demands some cost.  It requires that our good faith conversational partner is someone who we trust enough and it requires their good faith to not just agree. 

It requires the tiniest amount of rejection (of a story) and the most massive kind of acceptance (of your person).  And the outcome can be monumental.

#50thingsofvalue