This is why I listen.

I’ve realised over the years that you have to be a certain kind of person to do what I’ve done most of my life.I can sit for hours, barely moving, listening. Not thinking. Just being. People often ask what’s going through my head and never quite believe me when I say “nothing” — but that’s the truth. It’s a kind of meditation.I think of my mind as having boxes. A reading box. A gardening box. An odd-jobs box. I only open one at a time. But my favourite box of all is the empty one. That’s the box I open when I’m recording.In a world that never stops making noise, we’ve forgotten how therapeutic it is to be quiet and to listen. When you do, nature reveals far more than she ever does to the restless observer. Life carries on around you, unbothered — until we arrive and make a din again.Silence isn’t absence.It’s presence.www.thelisteningplanet.comhttps://www.facebook.com/thelisteningplanet/