The Rabbit Listened

A children’s book with a grown-up lesson

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The little boy in the book builds this cool structure out of his building blocks. He stands back to look at it, but it gets knocked over. Devastated, he curls up on the floor, alone.

Various animals come by to talk to him, but he doesn’t want to listen. The elephant tries to be empathetic. The kangaroo points out the mess that needs to be cleaned up. The snake tells him it will make him feel better to go wreck someone else’s creation. But one by one, just as they came, the animals all leave. And the boy is left all alone.

He doesn’t notice when the quiet rabbit walks in and slowly comes over to sit next to him. Slowly, he nestles up next to him. As the boy grows more comfortable with his new companion, he opens up and tells the rabbit about everything that happened. He can rebuild his creation and outline his plans to make it even better.

Through it all, the rabbit listened.

As humans, it’s in our nature to want to fix everything. When someone comes to us with a problem, the first we do is jump in with a solution. Oftentimes, we do this before even understanding or knowing what the problem is. A lot of the time, it’s ill-conceived advice. We can’t give advice all of the time, and we certainly can’t advise without knowing the problem. We tend to skip listening and dive in headfirst. We all need to take at least a few extra minutes to stop and listen. I think we’ll be surprised at how many times we can solve the problem just by listening.

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