How Do You Listen?

I’ve been thinking about what it means to listen. Listening is a form of active engagement which I think is different from hearing. Hearing is physiological. Hearing is a passive and automatic sensory process. If we have the privilege to hear, we don’t control it. Listening is an active and intentional process. It involves paying conscious attention to the sounds we hear, interpreting them, and understanding their meaning. Listening requires focus, cognitive engagement, and often emotional involvement. It's a deliberate action that goes beyond mere auditory perception to include processing and comprehension. We don’t have to have the physiological function to hear in order to listen.