From the Wellness Centre
Easter Holidays – a time for connection, listening and reconciliation …
Well – it’s incredible to think of Term One as complete! Many of the young people I’ve had the pleasure of sharing my time with over the past few weeks are looking a little like their tanks are emptying. As are my esteemed colleagues.
Both our School Captains, Maddie Warren and Louis Cosh mentioned at the Easter Service yesterday how the Easter weekend is a definite favourite for them as they reconnect with family members and friends, and steep themselves in the balm and validation of belonging and feeling loved.
It is my sincere hope that in the next fortnight, families can reconnect with compassion and positive regard, prioritising healthy relationships while rejuvenating and refreshing tired bodies and brains. Easter offers us the opportunity to practise gratitude and compassion, and to develop our perspective-taking and empathy.
This article introduces you to three courageous figures who are working to bring peace to our world. We are aware of Jesus as a courageous interventionist who shone light on those whose voices weren’t heard and brought hope to his people. This week’s column brings the Art of Listening to the fore – the featured trio see listening as the vanguard skill of our times.
(And there is a spruik for the Resilient Kids Conference in Perth where luminary speakers gather and share.)
Featured Easter Guests: Simon Sinek, Bill Ury and Deeyah Khan
When we pull focus a little from home and our loved ones – family and friends – we may feel daunted by what we see occurring in our broader contextual home: planet earth … recently I have been motivated by the work of Simon Sinek, Bill Ury and Deeyah Khan, the later of whom grew up in Norway where white skin-head gangs terrorised her small Muslim community.
In her authored documentary White Right, Emmy Award-winning film-maker Deeyah Khan joined the frontline of the race wars in America, sitting down face-to-face with Neo-Nazis and fascists and marching with them at the biggest and most violent Far Right rally in recent years. Khan, who received death threats from the Far Right movement after giving a TV interview advocating diversity and multiculturalism, tries to get behind the hatred and the violent ideology, to try to understand the personal reasons why people embrace racist extremism. You can see the trailer for this incredibly moving and confronting documentary here.
Simon Sinek investigates how listening helps us embrace different perspectives. Listening is not the act of hearing the words spoken – it is creating an environment for the other person to feel heard: so listening really is the art of understanding the meaning behind those words.
Sinek claims that listening can be learned and practised by replacing judgement with curiosity, by letting silences and pauses be, by offering small encouragers, by sitting with sometimes even reprehensible content and waiting while the person can “empty their bucket”, by developing mindful self-awareness around our own listening experiences, by acknowledging that faith and hope in joining with another human on a vulnerable level is a worthwhile thing … Listening is THE way to build trust, to find common ground in opposition, to perhaps loosen our rigid position holding.
The Art of Listening | Simon Sinek (youtube.com)
Sinek quotes Bill Ury, a trained anthropologist, now a mediator, author of Getting to Yes, and who proclaims “peace is my passion” … who deems the importance of listening and notes the that when people feel heard – growth and reconciliation can sprout. Ury questions why we have peace talks when we need peace listens. This sounds glib maybe, but Ury has sat at many a table of global peace negotiations and he observes that they invariably begin by people stating what they want – pitting each representative in competition from the get-go – rather than flipping it and initiating conversation around and really listening to … what they need.
William Ury: Getting to Yes (youtube.com)
So Easter is a time to consider how we might get along with each other: perhaps to work towards managing our deepest differences; being curious about the biases that keep us holding rigid stances and positions that have long lost their relevance and truth; how we might be able to forgive a loved one for a slight; how we might find some courage in cobbling together a new pathway towards deeper connection with a friend; maybe some of us will realise that others really do matter …
Resilient Kids Perth Conference 20 July 2024 Speaking Luminaries: Maggie Dent, Michelle Mitchell, Karen Young, Dr Justin Coulson
See the link below for this much-vaunted gathering of gurus in the mental health and parenting domains of young people. If you haven’t been to a Resilient Kids Conference you simply must! It’s much more than a conference. It’s a community of people, redefining resilience together.
MAIN Resilient Kids Conference | Michelle Mitchell
Easter: a time for regrowth, courage and hope. And chocolate …
Ms Sheryl Moncur | School Counsellor/Teacher