Real listening requires us to set down the weight of our own certainty. It asks us to be changed by what we hear.
Most of us listen waiting for our turn to speak. We are formulating the response, marshaling the counter-argument, deciding whether what’s being said deserves agreement or dismissal. We are everywhere except in the words themselves.
To really listen is to surrender, briefly, the project of being right. It is to allow another person’s truth to enter you and rearrange you. That is dangerous, and it is the only way understanding has ever happened.
The world right now is full of speech and starved of listening. The fix is not louder voices. The fix is quieter rooms.