Some people listen to other people because they are genuinely kind. They want to allow the other person to feel heard and to experience dignity and belonging. What is experienced is charity.

Some people listen to other people because they’re trying to be good listeners. They imitate the genuinely kind. Occasionally they seem kind. Others listen in order to flatter. Occasionally they seem respectful.

Some people listen to other people in order to learn the things other people have to teach them. Such people are curious.

Some people listen to other people in order to be liberated from themselves: they want an alternative truth to escape into. They run into the front door, through the house, and straight out the back door.

Some people listen to other people, even to people who are clearly deluded and confused, not in order to enter their delusion or confusion, but to learn just enough to find their way out of their own old truth. Even to you, they listen intently, only for the silences.

Some people listen to other people as an ascetic discipline: the vacuum that stands between understandings hurts us. Steadfast suffering of perplexity makes a soul strong and clean. Perplexity is a desert, and listening leads us there.

Some people listen to other people because they can find a seminal idea hidden in any mind, of any kind, and in their fertile soul grow this insight into an unprecedented idea.