The differences between hearing and listening

I feel like the main difference is that hearing is passive and listening is active. this is something I really didn’t understand until I really started to practice critical listening. I never considered how taxing and tiring critical listening is and also how impactful it can be. listening happens without you trying to do it and without any thought.

One example of when I experienced this recently was when I was listening to the new album from producer “Fred again…” called actual life 3. While listening I got so overwhelmed by all the complex intricacies of the album and how beautiful it was that I started to get really emotional about what I was hearing and had to take a moment from what I was doing.

One thing I find strange about hearing is that is probably the only sense you can’t really turn off or choose not to feel so you pretty much have no say in what you are hearing but you do have a choice over what you listen to.