My middle son and I were in the middle of a phone conversation when he said, “I need to call you back.”  It was clear from the background noises that he was walking while we were chatting. He handles a lot of his phone calls while walking. I used to walk while conducting important conversations many years ago, but those were in person, long before cell phones.

He was about to have an important conversation, too, I was to find out later when he called me back. He had broken our conversation because a neighbor that he encountered commented that he was always on the phone. My son shared that there was something in the neighbor’s comment that told him he should pause. So, he took a moment.

The man shared with my son that he missed his son. “I’m really missing my son today,” the man shared. His adult son had died a few years ago. A conversation between the two fathers ensued.

It took an existing level of trust for the neighbor to share what he did. In that trust came an opportunity for sharing and, perhaps, a bit of healing. I am proud that my son noticed the “something different” in what the man said and paused his day to take a moment with him.

W. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Travelled and many other excellent books, said that the principal form of showing love is attention, and the most important way that we can show attention is by listening.  

We should all pay attention; we should all take moments with and for others.