How to listen.

If a tree falls in a forest and there is no-one to hear it, does it make a sound?

No it does not. For a sound to be made there needs to be a listener. Unless a receiver (such as an ear) is present the changes in air pressure brought about by the movemeant of air molecules cannot be detected, registered and analysed as the stimulus we indentify as sound. If there is no-one, no animal or no electronic device to "hear" it, the falling tree makes no sound. Sounds exists only if there is a listener. 

As a mental health practitioner I am acutely aware of the importance of being a good listener, of listening "well" primarily because of the reason alluded to above. A speaker needs a listener as corroborator of their information and as proof of their presence. Theirs is a mutual relationship where the listener does not simply react to the speaker but is an active participant- the listener is interacting not reacting. As with the falling tree, the speaker makes no sound if there is no receiver to interact with them. My clients', my patients' and my colleagues' views have been authenticated by my actions of listening actively. Their existence, as a spokeperson, has been validated. 

In addition to being a simple receiver of stimuli the skilled listener uses their empathy to increase the bond of reciprocity by psychically placing themselves in the speakers' position. But for greater accuracy of understanding and a hopeful correlative bond the listener tries to imaginatively be the speaker. This is the difference between simple empathy ("what would I feel in their position"), which is the basic level of skilled listening, and a more advanced type of character and problem analysis employing a recognition of others' strengths and weaknesses.

The listener and the speaker have a fluid relationship where information is shared back and forth. The listener is not passive nor the speaker active but they are both equivalent and complementary actors in their interdependence. There is no weight of conversational responsibility on the speaker to lecture the listener nor on the listener themselves to be a dispassionate observer but instead there exists a relationship between speaker, listener, the ebb and flow of the information itself and, finally, the future space for develoments. 

This is synchronicity. And it is indicative of great learning experiences within our shared human community. It is empowering to be such an active participant and we would do well to recognise it as such.