The Power Of Listening With Heart
By Simone Ispa-Landa
Simone Ispa-Landa is an assoicate professor in sociology.
Many years later, I will hear someone describe a basketball player who “plays with heart,” and I will think how much I admire that.
My grandfather is gulping tea from a deep mug. I am 11. We are at the kitchen table. My grandfather is telling me about the time that his mother pushed him onto a train – a train that was leaving Leningrad - one of the very last trains to leave Leningrad before the Nazis reached the outskirts of the city.
His face is so alive, as he is telling me this - his hands are so alive – I can practically feel the train, smell the pounding fear and animal force that has taken over his mother. His mother, as he explains it, was a “simple woman.”
She was not educated. His father made a living repairing boots. My grandfather is telling me that his mother shouted and begged, but they were not allowed on.
This was a special train, a train that was transporting wounded soldiers to a hospital. It was not a train for civilians. Not a train for children. Not a train for desperate mothers. Not a train, my grandfather says, laughing, “For idiots like us, who had somehow gotten ourselves left behind, when we should have been evacuated.”
The story goes on; there are horrible moments and funny moments. There is so much death. So many mass executions. Mass graves. Mass hunger. Most of the family perishes. But there is also food, sports, music.
The return to Leningrad; the miracle of first love and finding a career path. The day with my grandfather is the beginning of my work’s life, defined not as leadership – the word feels overly remote to me, lacking in mutuality and warmth – but as listener.
““The day with my grandfather is the beginning of my work’s life, defined not as leadership – the word feels overly remote to me, lacking in mutuality and warmth – but as listener.”—@IspaLanda, associate professor and sociologist. #PowerToChangeStories ”
Simone Ispa-Landa is an associate professor in the School of Education and Social Policy and (by courtesy) sociology at Northwestern University. She is also a fellow at Northwestern’s Institute for Policy Research. She is a William T. Grant Scholar (2018-2023) and was a Spencer Dissertation Fellow (2009-2010). @IspaLanda