On listening
“Porque ouvir os outros (e os factos) não é uma capacidade fisiológica, mas sim ética — e toda a pessoa decente o sabe.””
Listening is a capacity to which, inherent to the professional paths I have chosen, I pay particular attention. More than from the point of view of study, research and the transmission of the knowledge I have been acquiring, I make a conscious and voluntary investment in the development of this capacity in myself.
The association of ideas leads me to the "old" question of what is innate and what is acquired; whether listening is something that is learned or is a skill that is born with the person.
In my experience, I think the answer may lie in a simple grammatical change and an equally simple adaptation: the change of the disjunctive conjunction "or" by the copulative conjunction "and" . So, listening is something that is learned and is a skill whose development depends on various circumstances and contexts.
It is easier to listen well if we have had the experience of being listened to well. Therefore, there is an important role here that results from the interaction with others, namely as children in the relationship with their parents.
On the other hand, the following idea recently occurred to me:
Someone with full hearing capabilities, in truth, cannot say that he is not able to listen. He can only say that he was not interested.
By interest we mean: arousal of attention, capacity to process and interpret what one has received. I am not just referring to the cognitive capacity to process information. Here I am also considering the affective component which, in permanent conjugation with the cognitive capacity, makes certain information move our interest to the point where we pay attention.
There is also an ethical dimension to listening. A dimension that Gonçalo M. Tavares brilliantly captures in a chronicle in Visão magazine with the title: "Eduardo Lourenço, congratulations!
The operational technique of listening is relatively easy to learn and apply - being quiet and paying attention to the sounds the interlocutor makes - but the art of listening is beyond this dimension. It includes factors - unconditional respect for the other person, genuine interest in what is being said and the person saying it, the Socratic attitude of not presuming to know what the other person is saying, etc. - immeasurably more complex, but nevertheless likely to be learned, with more or less effort, depending on how well we may have been listened to in the past and how we wish to listen and be listened to in the present and future.
Therefore, having already designated listening as a capacity and as an art, and with the help of Gonçalo M. Tavares, Roland Barthes and Rafael Echeverría, I share the idea that listening is, above all, a way of being and being.
