Listening is....

My grandmother's voice crackled through the phone, reciting Avvaiyar's ancient Tamil verses as she had for sixty years. I sat in my modern apartment, blockchain earnings pinging notifications, yet her words anchored something deeper within me. "Listening is understanding," she whispered, "not just hearing." That moment shifted everything. I realized my obsession with daily crypto gains meant nothing against preserving her wisdom, our heritage. I began recording her stories, digitizing them, sharing them with cousins scattered globally. She laughed when I explained blockchain would preserve our poetry forever. True wealth, I learned, lives in listening to those who came before, keeping our collective memory alive together.