Published
Oct 22, 2025
Author
Nicolás Fabian
The craft of listening
The craft of listening
Listening is perhaps the most intimate and most human gesture we possess. It is not merely about hearing, as someone who collects sounds, but about being touched, transformed, and shaped by them. The Latin *auscultare* already carried this sense of leaning in, of surrendering oneself.
Whoever listens opens up to the world, bends before it, and allows themselves to be crossed by it. Listening is, above all, an act of active vulnerability, a surrender that demands no guarantees. In the silence of a hospital, waiting for news of those we love, I learned that listening can be the most difficult of crafts. It is not only about waiting for words, it is about enduring the pause where anything can happen. The silence there is not empty, but a tense field of omens.
Every step in the corridor, every distant voice, carries the weight of possibility. Listening, in such moments, is walking a tightrope between hope and fear, between the cold bile that paralyzes and hot bile that sets the heart ablaze.
The ancient Greeks believed that body and soul were governed by four humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Each one represented a temperament sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, and melancholic. When balanced, there was health; when one prevailed, illness arose. Black bile, associated with melancholy, was both shadow and spark of the creative spirit. Yellow bile, linked to fire and anger, moved action and daring. Between them, listening seems to move: at times we sink into the dense waters of melancholy, at times we ignite with the vital energy of anger. Every act of listening reshapes our inner climate, as if redrawing the secret map of our emotions.
Aristotle, in the *Nicomachean Ethics*, taught that virtue does not arise from natural gifts, but from the habit of deliberate and constant practice of moderation. Virtue, he said, dwells in the mean between excess and deficiency. Listening is also this virtue of the mean: not yielding to the excess of speaking, nor falling into absolute muteness. It is a continuous exercise of balance between the impulse to respond and the patience to receive, between the desire to intervene and the courage to remain silent. Listening is ethics because it is a relational act, a recognition of otherness, an opening of space to what surpasses us.
But there are many ways of listening. There is passive listening, which merely gathers the sounds of the world, absorbing or letting them pass as background noise. And there is active listening, which leans in, which opens, which commits. Active listening involves full attention, presence of body and gaze, suspension of judgment. It is a gesture of hospitality. In actively listening, we offer the other a space to exist, a territory where their voice will not be judged but welcomed.
Martin Buber offers a luminous key: for him, authentic relation exists only when we see the other as a “Thou” and not as an “It.” To listen, then, is to renounce capturing the other as object and to let them exist before us as full presence. It is an encounter, not of data but of worlds. Only in the I–Thou relation does sound cease to be noise and become voice, and voice cease to be discourse and become shared life.
“The I becomes through the Thou; all authentic being is being-with.”
Buber, M. (2014). *I and Thou* (M. B. N. da Silva, Trans.). Moraes Editores.
Nature itself knows this silent listening. The acacia, for instance, lives in intimate relation with its environment: its sensitive leaves fold at the slightest touch, its roots warn other plants of distant dangers through invisible chemical signals. Listening is being like the acacia, vibrating with what cannot be seen, reacting to what approaches before it takes shape. It is a vegetal, subterranean listening, that feels before knowing, moving without making noise.
Listening to life also means listening to the heart, that first sound that accompanies us even before memory. Each beat is a word beyond language, a narrative that needs no translation. As in the famous Roxette song “Listen to Your Heart,” listening to the heart is to pause before farewell, before the irreversible decision. It is to offer the moment a final listening, like pressing one’s ear to silence to know if something still pulses there. It is not sentimentalism; it is a gesture of radicalattention, an act of care toward what may be about to vanish. It is understanding that the heart does not speak of the immediate present, but of the whole time pulsing within us, what we inherited, what we lived, and what has yet to come. The heart is our living archive: each beat echoes traces of the past, announces the vibration of the now, and whispers of what may arrive.
For listening is also about crossing time. We listen to the dead in the words of the living; we listen to the future in the silences of the present. To learn to listen to the past is to decipher the layers of dust that formed us; to listen to the present is to remain open to what vibrates here; to listen to the future is to accept that it is still unknown, but that the act of listening already summons it.
Listening thus becomes a visionary ecology: it returns us to the web of interdependence that sustains us and, at the same time, opens a window to what is not yet, but may come to be.
Listening is not neutral. It is allowing oneself to be affected to the limit. It is accepting that every word, every gesture, every silence of the world will transform us forever. It is the courage to remain vulnerable, to expose the heart even knowing it may be wounded. And, at the same time, it is the trust that, even wounded, we can be regenerated by the resonance of the other.
Listening is not an isolated act, but a practice that creates community. Each shared silence, each vibration received, each voice listened to builds an invisible web that connects us to one another.
Listening is recognizing that we do not exist alone, that our heart beats in resonance with other hearts, that each breath echoes in the breath of the world.
Listening, at its core, is to remain open. It is to accept fragility and, still, to choose listening as a gesture of life. This is how we shape ourselves, not only individually but as a sensitive community, a visionary ecology where life is sustained in the resonance between bodies, silences, and possible futures. Listening is trusting that the world does not exhaust itself in what we already know. It is keeping a crack open in the heart so that the unexpected may enter, even when it disarms us, even when it wounds us. To know that each voice we allow to touch us carries other voices, stories, and times that intertwine with ours. It is also to accept that we are made of echoes of what we loved, what we lost, what has not yet happened. Each sound we welcome inscribes itself in us as future memory, as a promise of transformation. It is not only a gesture of reception but of creation: by listening, we reconfigure the world within us and gradually become able to dream new worlds outside of us.
In the end, perhaps listening is the most radical form of hope. Whoever listens believes it is still worth paying attention, believing that something, there, deserves to be rescued from the noise.
Listening is a silent pact, the trust that if we know how to listen, we can cross together the pause between what we have been and what we may yet become.
Listening is perhaps the most intimate and most human gesture we possess. It is not merely about hearing, as someone who collects sounds, but about being touched, transformed, and shaped by them. The Latin *auscultare* already carried this sense of leaning in, of surrendering oneself.
Whoever listens opens up to the world, bends before it, and allows themselves to be crossed by it. Listening is, above all, an act of active vulnerability, a surrender that demands no guarantees. In the silence of a hospital, waiting for news of those we love, I learned that listening can be the most difficult of crafts. It is not only about waiting for words, it is about enduring the pause where anything can happen. The silence there is not empty, but a tense field of omens.
Every step in the corridor, every distant voice, carries the weight of possibility. Listening, in such moments, is walking a tightrope between hope and fear, between the cold bile that paralyzes and hot bile that sets the heart ablaze.
The ancient Greeks believed that body and soul were governed by four humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Each one represented a temperament sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, and melancholic. When balanced, there was health; when one prevailed, illness arose. Black bile, associated with melancholy, was both shadow and spark of the creative spirit. Yellow bile, linked to fire and anger, moved action and daring. Between them, listening seems to move: at times we sink into the dense waters of melancholy, at times we ignite with the vital energy of anger. Every act of listening reshapes our inner climate, as if redrawing the secret map of our emotions.
Aristotle, in the *Nicomachean Ethics*, taught that virtue does not arise from natural gifts, but from the habit of deliberate and constant practice of moderation. Virtue, he said, dwells in the mean between excess and deficiency. Listening is also this virtue of the mean: not yielding to the excess of speaking, nor falling into absolute muteness. It is a continuous exercise of balance between the impulse to respond and the patience to receive, between the desire to intervene and the courage to remain silent. Listening is ethics because it is a relational act, a recognition of otherness, an opening of space to what surpasses us.
But there are many ways of listening. There is passive listening, which merely gathers the sounds of the world, absorbing or letting them pass as background noise. And there is active listening, which leans in, which opens, which commits. Active listening involves full attention, presence of body and gaze, suspension of judgment. It is a gesture of hospitality. In actively listening, we offer the other a space to exist, a territory where their voice will not be judged but welcomed.
Martin Buber offers a luminous key: for him, authentic relation exists only when we see the other as a “Thou” and not as an “It.” To listen, then, is to renounce capturing the other as object and to let them exist before us as full presence. It is an encounter, not of data but of worlds. Only in the I–Thou relation does sound cease to be noise and become voice, and voice cease to be discourse and become shared life.
“The I becomes through the Thou; all authentic being is being-with.”
Buber, M. (2014). *I and Thou* (M. B. N. da Silva, Trans.). Moraes Editores.
Nature itself knows this silent listening. The acacia, for instance, lives in intimate relation with its environment: its sensitive leaves fold at the slightest touch, its roots warn other plants of distant dangers through invisible chemical signals. Listening is being like the acacia, vibrating with what cannot be seen, reacting to what approaches before it takes shape. It is a vegetal, subterranean listening, that feels before knowing, moving without making noise.
Listening to life also means listening to the heart, that first sound that accompanies us even before memory. Each beat is a word beyond language, a narrative that needs no translation. As in the famous Roxette song “Listen to Your Heart,” listening to the heart is to pause before farewell, before the irreversible decision. It is to offer the moment a final listening, like pressing one’s ear to silence to know if something still pulses there. It is not sentimentalism; it is a gesture of radicalattention, an act of care toward what may be about to vanish. It is understanding that the heart does not speak of the immediate present, but of the whole time pulsing within us, what we inherited, what we lived, and what has yet to come. The heart is our living archive: each beat echoes traces of the past, announces the vibration of the now, and whispers of what may arrive.
For listening is also about crossing time. We listen to the dead in the words of the living; we listen to the future in the silences of the present. To learn to listen to the past is to decipher the layers of dust that formed us; to listen to the present is to remain open to what vibrates here; to listen to the future is to accept that it is still unknown, but that the act of listening already summons it.
Listening thus becomes a visionary ecology: it returns us to the web of interdependence that sustains us and, at the same time, opens a window to what is not yet, but may come to be.
Listening is not neutral. It is allowing oneself to be affected to the limit. It is accepting that every word, every gesture, every silence of the world will transform us forever. It is the courage to remain vulnerable, to expose the heart even knowing it may be wounded. And, at the same time, it is the trust that, even wounded, we can be regenerated by the resonance of the other.
Listening is not an isolated act, but a practice that creates community. Each shared silence, each vibration received, each voice listened to builds an invisible web that connects us to one another.
Listening is recognizing that we do not exist alone, that our heart beats in resonance with other hearts, that each breath echoes in the breath of the world.
Listening, at its core, is to remain open. It is to accept fragility and, still, to choose listening as a gesture of life. This is how we shape ourselves, not only individually but as a sensitive community, a visionary ecology where life is sustained in the resonance between bodies, silences, and possible futures. Listening is trusting that the world does not exhaust itself in what we already know. It is keeping a crack open in the heart so that the unexpected may enter, even when it disarms us, even when it wounds us. To know that each voice we allow to touch us carries other voices, stories, and times that intertwine with ours. It is also to accept that we are made of echoes of what we loved, what we lost, what has not yet happened. Each sound we welcome inscribes itself in us as future memory, as a promise of transformation. It is not only a gesture of reception but of creation: by listening, we reconfigure the world within us and gradually become able to dream new worlds outside of us.
In the end, perhaps listening is the most radical form of hope. Whoever listens believes it is still worth paying attention, believing that something, there, deserves to be rescued from the noise.
Listening is a silent pact, the trust that if we know how to listen, we can cross together the pause between what we have been and what we may yet become.
Next Projects
