Life lessons with Jeet Agrawal

We all want to be listened to, but we hardly try to listen to others what they want to say. Listening is the most important thing in every relationship to be strengthened. And to listen to what other people are really saying, you also need to listen to what they’re not saying. No matter how hard people may appear on the surface, mostly everyone is tender inside and has a desperate need to be understood. The following poem (one of my all-time favorites) captures this need. PLEASE . . . HEAR WHAT I’M NOT SAYING by Charles C. Finn Don’t be fooled by me. Don’t be fooled by the mask I wear. For I wear a mask, I wear a thousand masks, masks that I’m afraid to take off, and none of them is me. Pretending is an art that is second nature with me, but don’t be fooled. . . . I give the impression that I’m secure, that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well as without; that confidence is my name and coolness is my game; that the waters are calm and that I’m in command and I need no one....

 • GOALS IN ACTION When I was a sophomore in high school, I weighed 180 pounds. My brother David, a freshman, weighed a whopping 95 pounds. We were only one year apart, yet I was twice his size. But David had a mountain of a spirit and did incredible things to get to where he wanted to go. This is his story: I will never forget when I tried out for the freshman football team at Provo High. At five feet two inches and weighing only 90 pounds, I was even smaller than the stereotypical 98-pound weakling. I couldn’t find any football equipment to fit me; it was all too big. I was issued the smallest helmet they had but still had to tape three ear pads together on each side of it to make it fit my head. I looked like a mosquito with a balloon on its head. I used to dread football practice, especially when we had to crack heads with the sophomores. We used to line up facing each other about ten yards apart with the freshmen on one side and the sophomores on the opposite side. When coach ...