Seven Thousand Ways to Listen

• Jan 25, 2016

Seven Thousand Ways to Listen

The title of Mark Nepo's book "Seven Thousand Ways to Listen" refers to his conversation with an African linguist who discusses the world has around 7,000 languages.

The book explores ways of listening essentially to the universe and offers solace to those coming to terms with losing their hearing. The book is not about losing your hearing it is more about listening.

Many people with hearing issues will relate to this exerpt from the book-:

"Like everyone who begins to lose their hearing I lost the edges first. Voices on the phone sounded a bit underwater. When Susan would speak to me from our living room, I knew she said something but her sweet voice broke up like a bad radio.

I quickly grew tired of asking her to repeat herself. Soon I realized that, as I was struggling to keep up outwardly, I was also being asked to spend more time inwardly. This utimely shutdown of outer noise was forcing me to listen to a new found depth."

author Mark Nepo

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How to listen better

"Deep listening requires letting go of that internal argument with the world" 

"Before we can truly listen we must exhaust ourselves of our assumptions"

Who cannot benefit from this advice? We often watch politicians point scoring each one not actually listening but formulating a response to win the argument.

• Hearing
• Listening