Yesterday I was in the countryside and, instead of looking at the landscape, I dedicated myself to listening to it.
It is a completely different experience. When you look, the landscape is something out there, in front of you. When you listen, the landscape surrounds you, includes you.
I heard the birds taking turns like a conversation. I heard the wind moving the poplar leaves, that sound that seems like water. I heard the buzzing of insects, the crack of a branch, and far away, a dog barking.
And suddenly I realised it had been a long time since I had heard any of that. Not because it did not exist, but because I was not there.
Listening is one of the deepest forms of presence. Really listening, without preparing the answer, without labelling what comes. Just opening and letting it in.
Today I tried to apply that listening to people. To my mother, to a friend, to myself. And I discovered that when I listen like that, I almost never know what to say, but the conversations become truer.
The landscape does not need us to speak to it. Only to listen. Perhaps people neither.