Listening to Talk and Talking to Listen

Listening is difficult, much more difficult than talking, which is why most people talk more than they listen, or talk over their listening, acting as if they’re listening when they’re actually talking, able to do two things at once, however haphazardly. Listening is thought to be transactional, but I would argue that it’s the opposite of transactional; real listening is far too selfless an act to be thought of as transactional.

The listener should expect to be paid nothing for listening, thus ruling out professional listeners (therapists et.al.) as bona fide listeners. Faux listeners are the most pernicious of all, faux listeners pretend to listen, building a gauzy web around your words, words you sincerely believe they’re hearing you say, in which they intend to ensnare you with their faux concern, faux compassion, faux empathy, and other faux’s too numerous, too diverse, too nefarious to mention out loud. Faux listeners outnumber real listeners a million to one.

Hans-Georg Gadamer, philosopher, had a beautiful phrase that covered both listening and talking: true conversation is “horizonless.” Horizonless, I picture both the listener and the speaker on some sort of voyage together with no captain, crew, or passengers, taking turns paying attention to one another, being led by both their speech and the silences of their listening. Is such a state possible, I wonder?

Or is Gadamer’s beautiful phrase only a philosopher’s dream, yet another kind of ideal state to be admired but never achieved? Or worse, a conversation I can only have with myself?