I could have made a fortune when I was still a young boy. I had a treasure trove of highly salacious stories that I had accumulated over several years. Unfortunately for me, there were no tabloid newspaper publishers anywhere near the village where I grew up so my possessions were worthless. Where and when you are born really do matter in life.

My village was in a remote part of Ghana. It was not on the country’s map so not many people knew about us. Consequently, there was little in terms of government services. Disputes among the residents were adjudicated by elders in the community. Those judges were neither elected nor appointed by anyone. They mostly earned their unpaid positions through positive reputations that they had established over time.

My father was one of those highly respected elders. He was also widely considered to be the fairest judge in the community. As a result, the most contentious disputes were often brought before him. The problem was that much of the time, he wasn’t in the village. He had relocated to another hamlet in search of more fertile land to farm so he could cultivate enough crops to feed his large family. His new farm, where he lived during much of my childhood, was about twenty miles away from the village. The area was so remote that it was inaccessible to vehicles. Travel there was mostly by foot through dense jungle. His visits home to see his family were therefore quite infrequent.

There was always a backlog of cases waiting for him when he returned. Plaintiffs typically came to our house to speak to him about their issues. After listening to their grievances, he would ask the complainants to come back on specified dates for the “court” proceedings. He would then send someone to summon the accused to appear on the scheduled date and time.

Almost always, the messengers were either my sister Esther or me. We were the third and fourth youngest of the fourteen children in the family. Esther was two years older than me and was my best friend at home, in part because we both loved to gossip.

The cases brought before my father varied widely. Many of them were land disputes, but there was a good number of marital issues. Polygamy was a culturally accepted practice in most parts of Ghana in those days, especially in the rural areas. The vast majority of men in my village had several wives. Inevitably, there were frequent complaints by women who accused their husbands of negligence, favoritism, and other unjust behaviors. Some men in the community were notorious for having mistresses in addition to their multiple wives.

The “dry” cases involving land disputes were of no interest to Esther and I. But whenever we received any hint that one of those philanderers was going to appear in a proceeding, we knew it would be a blockbuster. We made sure not to miss that show. Technically, we were not allowed to listen in, and no one ever knew that we did. There was a row of three bedrooms in our house, with a verandah in front of it. Two long wooden benches, reserved for visitors, sat on that porch. That area served as the courtroom. To hear the juicy details of a case, all we had to do was hide behind the door of one of the bedrooms.

My father was illiterate so his adjudications had no basis in any legal theory. They were purely based on common sense. Listening to him conduct one of those proceedings amounted to witnessing excellence in the art of arbitration. He always gave equal chance to both parties in a dispute to make their cases. Interrupting whoever was speaking was never tolerated. I was frequently surprised by his willingness to listen to each side for as long as it took, and his general capacity for restraint. I heard him say to disputants many times that the key to fair resolution of any disagreement is to make sure that at the end, each side is satisfied that it had been properly heard. Sometimes, when folks went on and on and the natural inclination for most people would be to interject and get things moving, he sat patiently and listened.

Occasionally, in some of the highly charged cases, emotions threatened to boil over. Those were the only times he felt the need to insert himself. His instrument of choice, always, was humor. My father was one of the wittiest people I have ever known. He could use his wit to defuse whatever tension bubbled up during a proceeding.

Today, I have mixed feelings about all that snooping I did. I took great pleasure from listening to all that highly sensitive information about people’s lives without ever stopping to think about the anguish of the individuals involved in those cases. Worse, I often prayed for the number of marital troubles in the village to rise so I could have more “shows” to listen to. I am tempted to lay part of the blame on Esther. She was older and wiser, and should have steered her younger brother clear from such highly inappropriate activities. But as a preacher of the importance of taking responsibility for one’s actions, I will own this one.

Despite those misgivings, the eavesdropping did have some wonderfully positive effects on me. Without knowing it, I was learning several extremely important life lessons. Three stand out for me in particular.

First, I was endlessly baffled by my father’s frequent rulings against men who were among his closest friends in the village. Unsurprisingly, the men were almost always the guilty parties in the cases and he stated those findings with zero ambiguity. I was constantly afraid that he would lose many of his friends over time. But I saw the opposite effect. I cannot count the number of times that many of those guilty men later came back to thank him for helping them to mend their ways. His friendships rather seemed to strengthen. Also, he was never afraid to rule against the women on the rare occasions that he found some of their behaviors to be the causes of the conflicts.

I learned from those observations that in general, people respect truthfulness and objectivity. Quite sadly, the world we live in today has become exceedingly tribal. Whether it is national politics or geopolitics, few of us are willing nowadays to call out any wrongs we see within our tribes. We pretend to be blind, but we instantly regain our 20/20 vision when even the slightest of transgressions are perpetrated by people from some other identity groups that we despise. This hypocrisy, which has become an epidemic, is a major contributor to the many intra-national and global crises we face today.

Second, through my “observations” of those proceedings, I learned that patient listening is extremely important in life. There are few conflicts that are more emotionally charged than marital troubles. But because my father allowed everyone who came before him as much time as they needed to air their grievances, whatever pressure had built inside them largely dissipated by the time they left the house.

As most of us know by now, populism is on the rise everywhere today because of people’s frustrations with not being “listened to” by elites. Whether this charge has merit or not is open to debate. But what I know is that one of the worst things anyone can do is to dismiss another person’s views or concerns out of hand. No matter how wrong we think other people are about anything, it is still worth the time to listen to what they have to say. I have learned that quite often, it is that patient and attentive listening that helps us to identify flaws in our own thinking. We should never assume that our opinions are so superior to those of others that we have to “make them” see the world the way we do. Personal preferences and values vary widely so we should all guard against stances that would appear to others as dogmatic imposition of our views on them. That sense of humility is one that I try to maintain at all times nowadays.

The third crucial lesson that I learned is about the value of humor. Whether it is self-deprecating or made at someone’s expense, humor is an extremely powerful antidote to the myriad negative feelings that constantly torment us. Pope Francis purposely highlighted this benefit by inviting over one hundred comedians from all over the world to the Vatican in June 2024. Among them were some famously foul-mouthed comics. By welcoming all of them to the Vatican, the Pope was clearly sending the message that we should all learn to take life and ourselves a little less seriously than we tend to do. Eliminating offensive language from our discourse is a national imperative, but while pursuing that worthy objective, we should be careful not to inadvertently create a humorless society.

I have been extremely fortunate to have many fantastic teachers who guided me from that tiny Ghanaian village to where I am today. The best one, by far, was my father. Thank you, great coach, for showing me the proper way to interact with my fellow humans.