What comes out
When you open up your mouth
Rise your voice and let it flow
From within and also without
Wherever it goes with the current
Of life and love granting freedom
To be appreciated and left intact
Instead of limiting with thoughts
Attitudes, rules, and regulations
What in its heart is always free
The adventure of inner peace
No matter what turmoil rages
In the outer challenging all
To grow up as soul divine.
“Once upon a time” — again and still on the way
Much comes out when one knows how to listen
“What little Momo could do like no one else was listen. That’s nothing special, some readers might say, anyone can listen.
But that is a mistake. Only very few people can really listen. And the way Momo knew how to listen was completely unique.
Momo could listen in such a way that foolish people suddenly had very clever thoughts. Not because she said something or asked something that gave the other person such thoughts, no, she just sat there and listened, with full attention and acceptance. She looked at the other person with her big, dark eyes and the person in question felt how thoughts suddenly arose in him of which he had never suspected that they were in him.
She could listen in such a way that helpless or indecisive people suddenly knew exactly what they wanted. Or that shy people suddenly felt free and brave. Or that the unhappy and depressed became confident and joyful. And when someone thought that his life was all messed up and meaningless and that he was just one in a million, someone who didn’t matter at all and who could be replaced just as quickly as a broken pot — and he went and told all that to little Momo, then, while he was still talking, it became mysteriously clear to him that he was thoroughly mistaken, that he, just as he was, existed only once among all people and that he was therefore important for the world in his own special way.
This is how Momo was able to listen!”
— Momo, the strange story of time thieves and the child who returned the stolen time to the people, Micheal Ende, pp. 16-17