Listen to your parents?

Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction
    and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.
- Proverbs 1:8
 
You don’t have to agree, but you’d be wise to listen.
 
Listen without thinking about what you’re going to say next. Listen without looking for mistakes, misspeaks, and misnomers. Listen with openness and respect.
 
You may not agree after you listen, but you won’t know until you listen. 
 
People talk to us all the time. Messages swirl around us. We can’t (and probably shouldn’t) entertain them all. We need wisdom beyond our years to discern which ones deserve our attention. And we aren’t the first to have this problem.
 
One way to navigate the communications chaos in the world is to set up priority people, people to whom you’ll listen no matter what. You may not always do what they say, but your respect for them or your history with them leads you to pay attention to them. Maybe your spouse or your kids would fall into this category. Maybe an old and trusted friend. Maybe a father or a mother.
 
The biblical command to listen to your father’s instruction and resist the temptation to forsake your mother’s teaching slices through all the noise that buzzes around us. Start here. Start where children start. Start with your parents.
 
What lessons did your parents teach you? What did they say that was wise? What was foolish? What did you learn (rightly or wrongly) by the way they lived their lives? What does their legacy continue to speak to you today?

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