Last week, I went on what might go down in my personal history as the Worst Fieldtrip Ever. All the right intentions were there: a devoted dad who wanted to share his exciting workplace with his daughter and her classmates; fifty-odd second graders primed for a day out of the classroom; several energetic parents along to chaperone and drive. But it was pretty clear that things were not going to go as any of us hoped within the first five minutes.

It’s hard to describe, exactly, what went down, but suffice it to say that this well-meaning dad had little experience working with children other than his own sweet daughter, and he had a knee-jerk, verbally punishing response to losing their respect and/or attention. So during the first activity, which was some miasmic concoction of dividing the fifty kids into two teams who then had to divide themselves into groups of five – or five per group, as he occasionally shouted as the hysteria ramped up, though the numbers didn’t work, which made some children start to cry – in order for half of them to start developing advertising logos and the other half to race against the clock to complete a building challenge under threat of no treats if they failed to do so, we veered from pleasant school outing to Lord of the Flies panic. Or so I thought. Because as I sank down to see if I could help the huddle nearest me, I overheard my usually mischievous and rabble-rousing friend Joshua chanting to his classmates, “Stay true to yourselves! Don’t panic! We can do this!! STAY TRUE TO YOURSELVES!!!”

And just like that, I was reminded that, as usual, taking just an extra beat to listen wholeheartedly instead of jumping in and speaking up can lead to the most surprising of revelations. We tend to all look up and look out when the loudest voice rises above the crowd, but what kind of world has that yielded us?

Later that same day, as we tried to shepherd the fifty kids through eight different food station choices and a hungry noon worker bee crowd, I thought of how easily I might have missed overhearing the most important lesson of the day had I given in to my Type A, mother-of-three and teacher training to organize, interrupt, and manage. And believe me, I know: It’s SO hard to listen when you think you have good ideas. This is true in all aspects of life, but it’s especially true in the most important ones, those areas of life that sustain us – like our relationships to children and to our best work. And while I regularly have tough writing days when I come in, guns ablazing, ready to conquer the next piece with all the ideas I’ve collected overnight or in the car or while jotting dutiful notes down in a recovering academic’s blackout, the work almost always goes better when I remember to come in and listen to what the writing wants to say.

And what does writing want to say? Well, it’s usually similar to what children want to say. To get off its back and let it create and play and be heard not because it’s fully formed or logical or authoritative, but because when we open our minds to the quieter, less bossy voices in our lives, we might just let in the sort of vitality and wisdom we've been searching for.