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"Listen to life, and you will hear the voice of life crying, Be!" -James Dillet Freeman

Catherine Snyder is a senior anthropology major at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She grew up on an island off the coast of New Jersey called Long Beach Island.

=**I believe in listening. **=

 Growing up, my mom told me I was a “good listener”. The words seemed to stop at my ears as I tried to hear them. Good. Listener. I replayed them in my head, clumsily trying to piece them together. Was my so-called talent rooted in an innate ability to simply not talk? I knew I wasn’t as outgoing as some of my peers, but I never considered myself explicitly quiet. Although my ability to receive information without letting it spill into the ears of others seemed to impress my mom, I secretly wished I were more outgoing. After all, it was my little sister Chloe’s extroverted spunk that always won her the most friends at the beach. And the popular girls at the yacht club surely were not cherished for their silent demeanors. Despite my confusion, I took pride in my mother’s assurance and trusted that I would someday come to understand the meaning and value of those seemingly mismatched words.

 As I grew up and went to high school, I found myself becoming the one who all my friends came to with their problems. I came to understand my listening “skills” as being a good friend who people felt comfortable confiding in. I was proud of my ability to make people feel at ease when they were going through those end-of-the-world dilemmas that threaded the fiber of those trying high school years. Perhaps this was the essence of being a “good listener”.

 I went on to follow the path that led me from Jersey to Colorado, and from Colorado to India. Although I could not put my finger on the practical reasoning for such seemingly obscure choices for college and study abroad, I knew that something was guiding me, and I knew I should listen. My decision to study anthropology seemed to be guided by the same voice. Sure, having a degree in anthropology may not be the most useful when looking for a job and making money, but my heart saw something bigger in the things I was learning. When I was in India, I spent my last month in Dharamsala with Tibetans in refuge. I made some beautiful friendships with people who had been through agonies I could never imagine. They told me about the hardship of not having a country and being miles away from their families and loved ones. I was in awe of their honesty and willingness to confide their personal stories in me. It was then that I realized that anthropology is all about being a “good listener”.

 Over this year’s Christmas break, upon my return from fall semester in India, my mom and I walked up to the beach one cold winter’s night to see the full moon over the ocean. As far as I could tell, we didn’t go there to talk. As I stood next to my mother, breathing the salty air that nourished the seed of my youth, it dawned on me that we went there to listen. Like the Tibetans in exile, like the little girls and boys of my youth, like my mother and me, the roaring moonlit waves and the icy starlit sky had a story to tell. I clutched my mother’s hand, closed my eyes, and opened my ears. The comfort of listening, and really hearing, came over me. Again those words surfaced, yet somehow transformed. “Find out which voice is yours, and listen to it.” I glanced over at my mom and we smiled, ear to ear.