"This I Believe" Summeries

Listening is Powerful Medicine

Summary: In this essay, Alicia Conill discovers the power that simply listening has. In the story she tells, it affects both patient and employee in different ways. Conill is shaken out of her typical, interruptive medical questioning by a patient who feels that she is not being heard. Moved into acting the listener, Alicia begins to hear and understand that the patient has many problems, the stress of which might have been contributing to her medical condition.
The lesson is cemented when Alicia herself was later diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, leaving her in a wheelchair. She now understands the improvement that simply listening, or being listened to, can have on not only the psyche, but also entire situations. Within her wheelchair, Conill now personally knows the power of listening, and she now teaches this medical lesson from the perspective of a patient.


Caring Makes Us Human

Summary: Troy Chapman speaks of his prison experience with a stray cat, which taught him the fundamental human desire to care for others—including other creatures. He explains that after not touching a cat or dog for over 20 years, when one snuck into the prison grounds outside, he was reminded of the feeling of love. He recognized the fact that he could enrich the creature’s life simply by caring for it, and he found peace in that caring. Not only that, many other inmates who may or may not have interacted with each other before came together over the cat. They fed it, groomed it, took turns petting it, and were genuinely changed by the mangy cat. Chapman decided that prison inmates not only needed to be cared for, they needed to be given a chance to care for something else.


Always Go to the Funeral

Summary: Deirdre Sullivan has always followed her father’s teaching and gone to funerals. As a young lady, she never really felt the desire to attend funeral calling hours, but her father’s persistent teaching regarding funeral attendance kept her going, even though she felt inconvenienced by it. However, her perspective began to change when she noticed the influence that simply showing up to a funeral had on its mourners. She remembers a woman whom she gave condolences to in a very slight, verbal gesture. Though Deirdre’s experience at that particular funeral was a boring one, the affect her simple gesture had on the woman who was mourning was emotional and very supportive.
Following her father’s death, Deirdre is ultimately shown the value of a funeral full of people who might be “inconvenienced.” She recognizes the support it provides, whereas an empty funeral is much more akin to a “painfully under-attended birthday party” or a “hospital visit during happy hour.”