A Vocation of Radical Listening

By: Tekalign Nega Angore (Phd)₁

Radical listening is my vocation. This has become clear to me across many years and diverse experiences as a researcher, teacher, friend, and parent.

Still, you might rightly ask, “How can listening be a vocation?” and “What makes listening radical”?

Listening becomes a vocation when it’s chosen and practiced as our default orientation in life. What makes listening radical is its other-centeredness: the needs of the speaker are the center of attention rather than the ego.

In this vocation, the speaker — be it a community, an individual, or the inner self — is unconditionally accepted without any value judgment. Radical listeners become non-threatening presences that cherish any speech, verbal or non-verbal, as sacred.

In this posture of listening, the goal is to reach a level where the speaker is “seen and heard” in the way they want to be “seen and heard.” This quality of listening makes image management and public censorship unnecessary.

Radical listening leads to far more than understanding the speaker. It carves out space where self-disclosure is also self-exploration.

In this way, radical listening is a creative process that allows authenticity to thrive. It is a form of resistance to our natural tendencies to be the center of attention. More than anything, radical listening delights in the freedom of the speaker and a posture of humility, always motivated by learning.

Radical Listening: To Whom Shall We Listen?

As I invite you to practice the art of radical listening, it is crucial to ask, “To whom shall we listen?”

The answer is simple and straight-forward: we listen to everyone. But the following orientations are especially important in this practice.

First, we listen to our own communities.

I said “our own” very intentionally. Life begins in community, and everyone has community of some kind: family, a nation, an ethnicity, a religious group, a political organization, an economic class.

And whether we like it or not, each of us has absorbed our community’s wisdom and also its mistakes — often uncritically. Here radical listening prioritizes inclusivity.

Inclusivity is so important because every community is diverse and amplifies some voices over others. The community’s voice becomes defined by the dominant voices, the privileged ones in the societal organization. The other voices — the unpopular and discomforting ones — become marginalized.

In this way, we essentialize our community. This simply means that we reduce it to one unchanging voice. Before we know it, we exclude crucial voices and perpetuate unfair structures.

The goal of radical listening is to go beyond our essentialized communities with their totalitarian ideological narratives. Radical listening aspires to include the excluded in the existing power structures. Most simply, it fosters expanded community.

Second, radical listeners listen to other communities.

Our community is not the only one in the world. There are other communities with whom we have many similarities and differences. We often underestimate our commonalities and focus on what distinguishes us.

In radical listening, the goal is not to convert the other. The goal is to understand and, with our understanding, to enrich each other. I call this mutual flourishing.

For mutual flourishing to be possible, we need to take seriously the otherness of the other. The other is not a potential us; they will never turn into our image; and that is beautiful. When we see others, it is not like seeing ourselves in a mirror but rather genuinely seeing *others*.

As we practice radical listening, the image of others no longer threatens us. We surrender painting with a broad brush that hides the diversity in every community. We remember the crucial fact that no community is the same and often its representatives don’t speak for the whole community.

Clearly, then, radical listening goes beyond news headlines and the speeches of political elites. We also listen to everyday voices in the mundane, as well as the so-called outliers in other communities.

Third, we listen to our self.

I have hardly learned the lesson that we are often strangers to ourselves. Self is often a treasure chest full of resources but also an unexplored territory.

Listening to self, then, requires a lot of courage. All too often, fear blocks the journey into the deeper self. We have been conditioned not to trust ourselves.

Failing to listen to self, however, has serious consequences. We strive to become someone we are not, and this never satisfies us.

Radical listening invites us to listen to our self not only in solitude but also in conversation with others. To understand our self,  conversation with others is crucial, since some of the self may be hidden from us but very vivid to others. Exploration of self with others has the potential to uncover our own unconscious psyche.

Fourth, radical listeners listen for God.

Most of us believe that reality is alive with something transcendent that gives us meaning and purpose in life. We seek to connect with this reality at a deeper level and try to live in harmony with it.

From this perspective, radical listening to God is practicing spirituality. Spirituality is where we transcend our conditioning to our society and connect with a source of inspiration to live a more fulfilled life.

Listening for God, however, is not mediated only through religious communities. It is always with us in every walk of life. When we are radically oriented towards listening  for God, we find the voice everywhere — often in the least expected places and people, always surpassing our own imaginations.

Fifth, we listen to nature.

We often forget that we humans are part of — indeed, one of the smallest parts of — the universe or nature. Since modernity, our relationship to nature has been characterized by domination and exploitation rather than cultivation. We believe that nature is there only for our end.

This attitude is not making us better stewards of our world. Today nature is crying out in pain and desiring tenderness.

Radical listening to nature helps us to revisit and re-imagine the way we relate to nature. Like many ancient people, radical listeners to nature attentively look forward at least seven generations. We ask ourselves, “What are we doing to nature? How are we impacting the future generations?”

To sum up, radical listening invites us to listen carefully to our own communities, other communities, ourselves, God, and nature.

Radical Listening: How Do We Practice It? 

Radical listening can be difficult. This is because our long-ingrained habits often automatically kick in. The practice of radical listening requires deliberately nurturing the following mindsets.

Respect: you are my equal, and I will never look down upon you. I will strive to treat you like the most respected dignitary who is conveying a message on the most important topic. Your feelings, thoughts, and actions matter.

Acceptance: You are welcome as you are. There is no need to edit yourself to be accepted. You are not a project for me to fix but a partner in a conversation.

Curiosity: I care to know you because you are unique. Due to your uniqueness, you experience the world differently than I do. I value your subjectivity and willingness to disclose it.

Validation: You will never be judged or rejected. Your deep-seated desires, wishes, hopes, fears, longings, dreams, and struggles are affirmed.

Dialogue: I am not here to debate or defend. I ask question only to understand. I am here with the spirit of cooperation for mutual flourishing.

I invite you to join me in this vocation of radical listening. As I’ve noted, it isn’t always easy. But it’s changing my life and deepening my experience of meaning, joy, and peace.

Based on the brief introduction I’ve offered, what do you find exciting and/or intimidating in the vocation of radical listening? I’m grateful to share this journey with you.

[1] Thanks to my friend, Andrew Decort (PhD), for the edits!