ABSTRACT
A readiness to be all ears is thus not an innocent, or naive or blank-faced openness, but a studied one, one won and re-won over time. It is an outcome of study properly done. Readiness needs to be sought, cultivated. It needs to be taken care of properly and repeatedly and relentlessly. Readiness takes work, it takes energy, energeia, "aliveness", and it not only takes it. A quick and fleeting scenario from a graduate class full of practicing teachers meeting at a local school, where someone on leave from the local school system visited his old place of work and was surprised and frustrated by the level of relentless complaint he encountered, some former colleagues even complaining about how much others complained. Studying and the arts of writing don't precisely make lighter the burden of the world. They make it translucent.
