In the moment

An NPR Storycorps segment on Friday featured a Hospice chaplain and her 9-yr-old son. The son had accompanied his mother on one of her workdays to visit patients with Alzheimer's. She commented how she loved that he talked to them completely in their moment, not trying to correct them about anything.

And I thought, how beautiful.

It seems to me that it is one of the toughest things to do - employing  that childlike acceptance and just listening to people, particularly people in pain. It is so instinctive to rush in with advice or personal experience or counsel of any kind. We want the pain to be corrected and thus disappear, making their lives and ours consequently smooth again.

The young boy listened.

When she asked him what he took away from the visit he said that he thinks he understands that he should enjoy the good things in life, because sometimes there are bad times.

Wow. Message of the morning received.