Hello and welcome.
My name is Kathy and I'm glad you could join me.
The world won't listen.
This talk is inspired by The Smiths,
An English band popular in the 1980s.
Their lyrics were characterized by witty,
Melancholic and introspective themes and also personal vulnerability.
There's a certain kind of silence that hurts more than noise.
It's the silence after you said something that mattered and nobody heard it.
That silence has a name.
The world won't listen.
We live in a world where everyone is talking.
Social media overflows with opinions and outrage.
But the more we talk,
The less we seem to listen.
The more noise we make,
The lonelier it gets.
The Smiths were adept at giving outsiders a voice.
They sang for the awkward,
The misunderstood,
The invisible,
The kids who stood at the edge of the dance floor and never quite fitted in.
And maybe that's all of us sometimes.
Each of us trying to be heard in a world that values confidence over truth,
Volume over meaning,
Appearance over feeling.
The Smiths reminded us that loneliness could be poetry.
Fast forward to today.
We're surrounded by microphones,
Yet most of us whisper.
We have platforms,
But we use them to perform rather than to connect.
We say look at me,
And what we really mean is,
See me.
We shout opinions,
But rarely ask questions.
We scroll,
But we don't listen.
So maybe the title,
The World Won't Listen,
Isn't just a complaint.
Maybe it's a diagnosis.
A mirror held up to a culture that's forgotten how to pay attention.
What if listening,
Truly listening,
Is a radical act?
When we listen,
We make space for others to exist.
We tell them,
You are not invisible,
You matter.
And listening doesn't just mean waiting for your turn to speak.
It means letting someone else's world change yours.
It means sitting in discomfort,
Being curious,
And allowing silence to be safe again.
There is a line in one of the Smiths songs,
There is a light that never goes out.
That line is profound to me.
It's about hope.
Even when the world won't listen,
That light,
The need to be seen,
To connect,
To love,
Keeps burning.
And maybe the world doesn't have to listen all at once.
Maybe it starts with just one person.
You,
Me,
Right now.
If we can listen,
Really listen,
To one another,
Then maybe we can make the world a little less deaf,
A little less cruel,
A little more alive.
Thank you.
