Mainly Through People

In a new book called “Letters To My Son,” the author describes the life-enriching rewards of being a good listener. “If you like people first,” he says, “and ask questions later, see if the light you shine on others isn’t reflected back on you a hundred fold.” For example…

On a train going across Canada, I began talking to a man everyone else was avoiding because he was weaving and slurring his speech as if drunk. It turned out that he was recovering from a stroke. He had been an engineer on the same line we were riding, and long into the night he revealed to me the history beneath every mile of track: “Pile-O-Bones Creek,” named for the thousands of buffalo skeletons left there by Indian hunters; “The Legend of Big Jack,” a Swedish track-layer who could lift 500-pound steel rails; a conductor named “Mcdonald” who kept a rabbit as his traveling companion.

As the morning sun began to tint the horizon,…