I walked into the optical store the way one walks into a familiar place, almost domestic. I have worn contact lenses since I was eighteen, when I discovered that the world had blurred edges and that astigmatism demanded a small daily pact with technology. Over the years, the lenses became an extension of my body: discreet, predictable, reliable. But time began to add new layers to my vision. Over the past two years, presbyopia imposed itself with a rough kind of gentleness: letters that shrink, screens that drift away, arms that no longer quite reach focus. I adapted as many do: contact lenses for distance, reading glasses for what requires closeness. A functional arrangement, even if a provisional one.
At my most recent appointment, the doctor suggested something different: multifocal contact lenses. She explained that they would indeed be more expensive, but that they could restore a lost continuity to vision, a single gesture instead of overlapping solutions. I left the appointment curious, but cautious. After all, I had never worn multifocals before. There was a promise there, and every promise carries a request for trust.
At the optical store, the salesperson was expansive, the kind who speaks as if occupying space. I explained my situation, my doubts, my concern about adapting. I said I wanted to know the price of the multifocal lenses and whether it would be possible to try a test pair, a common practice, almost a rite of passage for those who wear contact lenses. He listened, nodded, but answered something else entirely. He talked about the higher price, about cost-effectiveness, and then presented his alternative: so-called monovision. One lens for astigmatism, the other for presbyopia; the brain, according to him, would do the rest. An improvised engineering, an agreement between parts that had never asked to be joined.
I tried again. I stated, clearly, that I wanted to know the price of the multifocal lenses. He opened a folder and asked which brand I preferred. I answered. I sensed a possible thread of understanding. But the number he gave me was not what I had asked for. Once again, it was the price for monovision lenses. I insisted. And the more I spoke, the more my words seemed to slide off the edges of the conversation, like water with no vessel to hold it. I was there, visible, audible, and yet not heard.
False listening
There was something paradoxical about that scene: a lens salesperson who did not see, a professional of focus who failed to adjust his listening. I spoke, and he responded, but not to what I was saying. He responded to what was already prepared inside him. As if my words were merely the necessary pause before he resumed his own discourse, polished, rehearsed, far too confident to hesitate.
It was not rudeness. Nor disinterest. It was something more subtle and, perhaps for that very reason, more common: listening already colonized by a ready-made answer. He had a solution before hearing the problem. A narrative before knowing the story. He had already decided, with an almost pedagogical conviction, what would be “best” for me. The conversation, then, was not an encounter, but a one-way route, and I was there merely to confirm the destination.
Every time I mentioned multifocal lenses, he diverted the question and returned to monovision, like someone steering the conversation back home. Perhaps he genuinely believed he was being helpful. Perhaps he was simply being efficient, in the most contemporary sense of the word: fast, decisive, economical. After all, why waste time listening if an answer is already available?
This is the silent obstinacy of our time: conviction that blocks perception. When someone is so certain of what they know that they can no longer see what is right in front of them. When listening ceases to be an act of attention and becomes merely the polite wait for one’s own turn to speak. The other turns into background noise, an inconvenient detail between one explanation and the next.
We live surrounded by discourses that present themselves as solutions, ready-made packages, well-intentioned shortcuts. As Byung-Chul Han observes, the excess of positivity, this compulsion for efficiency, performance, and immediate response, tramples the space of listening. Listening requires pause. It requires failure. It requires admitting that perhaps we do not yet know. And that, let’s be honest, is no longer fashionable.
Perhaps that is why listening has become such a rare resource. Not because there are too few ears, but because there are too many certainties. Not because people do not listen, but because they listen with the answer already in hand, as if measuring the world with lenses that only allow what confirms an already known prescription to come into focus.
The breaking point
There came a moment when I realized that repeating myself was pointless. My words had already completed their journey and returned without a destination, like letters sent back marked “address unknown.” The more I insisted, the more the conversation became an exercise in polite misalignment. I spoke of multifocal lenses; he returned to monovision. I asked about pricing; he offered persuasion. It was no longer an exchange. It was an automatic choreography.
The irritation did not arrive as an outburst. It came as fatigue. That particular exhaustion that arises when one realizes one is not being heard not because of a lack of clarity, but because of the other’s excess of certainty. Something closed inside me. And when something closes inwardly, the body usually decides before the mind does.
I thanked him, addressed him by name, and said, in a tone far too calm for the situation, that I would not leave my phone number because I had not liked the service. There was no raised voice. No accusation. Just a limit placed with precision. It was at that moment that something shifted in the room. The flow of words stopped. His face lost its trained readiness. For the first time since I had entered the store, silence settled in.
Curiously, that was when I was finally heard. Not when I explained my needs. Not when I formulated my questions. Not when I tried to negotiate possibilities. I was heard when I announced my withdrawal. When I made it clear that the conversation would not continue on the terms that had been imposed. Listening appeared not as attention, but as a reaction to loss.
I stood up, thanked him again, and left. No scene. No dramatics. Just the quiet realization that, more often than not, we only listen to the other when they are no longer there. When the bond breaks. When the opportunity has passed. As if listening were activated not by encounter, but by risk.
This may be one of the most unsettling paradoxes of contemporary relationships. In a world saturated with discourse, advice, and solutions, listening to the other seems to require the threat of absence. Only when someone leaves do we realize that there was something to be heard.
When listening creates connection
I left the first optical store without haste or drama, but with the strange feeling of having been crossed by something larger than a simple purchase. I walked a few meters along the shopping mall corridor and entered the competing store. The space was similar, the displays also offered promises of clarity and comfort. What changed was not the setting, but the way I was received.
The salesperson greeted me, asked what I was looking for, and this time, waited. There was a genuine pause there, not the anxious suspension of someone merely waiting for their turn to speak. I told the same story, mentioned the multifocals, spoke of my concern about adapting, of the price difference, of curiosity mixed with caution. She listened. She did not interrupt. She did not redirect the topic. She did not try to lead me toward an alternative solution before understanding the demand.
The questions came later, at the right time. She explained the trial lenses, the timelines, the possibilities of adaptation. There was no urgency to convince, only a willingness to clarify. The result was almost anticlimactic in its simplicity. I made the purchase. I began the trial period. I received a high-quality gift, the kind that feels less like strategy and more like care. I left the store with the feeling of having been recognized, not merely served.
Christophe Dejours reminds us that recognition is not a relational luxury, but a fundamental element of human bonds. When someone feels heard, something reorganizes internally. The act of listening validates the other’s experience, grants existence to their word. It is not about agreeing, but about admitting that there is a subject there, not merely an obstacle to be bypassed by a ready-made answer.
Perhaps that is why the purchasing decision became almost secondary. What was at stake was not merely the price of the lenses, but the experience of being considered in one’s singularity. Listening, when it truly happens, creates connection. And connection often precedes any transaction.
A few days later, already wearing the trial multifocal lenses, I realized that the adaptation had been surprisingly smooth. Reading flowed. My vision settled. There was a rediscovered continuity. But more than seeing better, I carried with me the quiet confirmation that being heard changes everything. Including the way we see.
When listening ceases to be an encounter
Perhaps what happened in that first optical store was not an exception, but a symptom. A small portrait of how we have been relating to one another. In times of excess information, endless discourse, and ready-made solutions, listening has become a rare gesture. Not because words are lacking, but because there is little availability to be affected by what the other brings.
Byung-Chul Han describes this scenario as a world saturated with positivity. Everything must function, perform, resolve. The time of listening, with its pauses, hesitations, and uncertainties, seems unproductive. Listening requires suspension. It requires admitting that one does not yet know. And in a culture that values quick answers, doubt becomes almost a moral failure.
In this context, the other ceases to be someone to encounter and becomes someone to manage. The other’s speech does not inaugurate a relationship; it merely activates a protocol. The salesperson may not have intended to impose anything. He may simply have been following a logic of efficiency. The problem is that when efficiency occupies all the space, encounter disappears.
Hartmut Rosa helps deepen this point by speaking of the loss of resonance. For him, a living relationship with the world happens when something affects us and responds to us in unpredictable ways. True listening is one of these moments of resonance. It does not control the outcome. It does not anticipate the end of the conversation. It risks contact.
When there is no resonance, everything becomes noise. Words pass by, but do not touch. People speak, but do not meet. Relationships accelerate, but grow impoverished. And little by little, the world becomes functional, efficient, and strangely silent on the inside.
Perhaps that is why so many interactions today produce exhaustion rather than connection. We are not tired of hearing too much, but of not being heard. We do not lack communication, but listening. The paradox is that the more we speak, the less we meet.
Listening, in this context, becomes almost an act of resistance. A simple act, but a profoundly countercultural one. A way of slowing the world down enough for the other to exist, not as a problem to be solved, but as a presence to be recognized.
What is lost when we do not listen
Perhaps the most unsettling thing about these scenes of non-listening is not the misalignment itself, but what is lost without making a sound. Something quietly escapes when the other speaks and finds no welcome. It is not only information that dissipates, but the possibility of relationship. The unheard word does not fall to the ground. It dissolves into the air, as if it had never existed.
There is a delicacy inherent in the act of listening that often goes unnoticed. Listening is allowing oneself to be slightly disorganized by what comes from outside. It is letting the other destabilize our categories, our mental shortcuts, our ready-made solutions. When we do not listen, we preserve internal order, but at the cost of impoverishing the world.
In many contexts, listening fails not due to inattention, but due to judgment. The demand is judged before it is understood. The other’s capacity is judged before their desire is heard. Sometimes the judgment is subtle, almost invisible. At other times, it anchors itself in harsher markers, such as appearance, origin, or skin color. Listening then ceases to be an open gesture and begins to obey silent hierarchies.
Even when we do not feel directly judged, we know that this field exists. It crosses consumer relations, professional environments, institutions, clinics, families. Some speak and are immediately heard. Others must repeat themselves. Others never find listening at all. Not because they speak softly, but because the world has not learned to hear certain voices.
Perhaps that is why listening has become an experience as rare as it is transformative. When it happens, it produces something close to relief. As if, for a moment, we did not need to explain ourselves so much. As if it were possible to exist without justifying every word. Being heard does not solve everything, but it organizes something inside. It gives contour to experience.
There is a silent knowledge transmitted when someone truly listens. A knowledge that is not learned from manuals or techniques. It is built in the willingness to sustain the presence of the other without reducing it. And perhaps it is this gesture, so simple and so demanding, that prepares the ground for a deeper ethics of encounter.
Listening is an ethical act
Perhaps listening is one of the most discreet forms of responsibility. Not the grand responsibility announced in speeches, but the one exercised at the minimal level of encounter. Listening is accepting that the other does not fully fit into our categories, our calculations, our previously adjusted prescriptions. It is admitting that there is something there that we do not yet know.
Seeing better does not always depend on more sophisticated lenses. Sometimes the problem is not lack of sharpness, but an excess of certainty. We look too much to confirm what we already think and listen too little to discover what we do not yet know. True listening requires an ethics of attention, a willingness to sustain the interval between question and answer.
To listen to someone is, in a way, to grant them existence. It is to recognize that their word deserves a place to land, that their experience will not be immediately translated, corrected, or discarded. When we do not listen, the other becomes a function, a statistic, an obstacle, or a client. When we listen, they become a person again.
There is something profoundly human in this gesture. Listening implies slowing down, relinquishing control, accepting that encounter may transform us. It is not a neutral act. Every true listening displaces. Every true listening demands a price. Perhaps that is why it is so often avoided.
In the end, the question is not only whether we listen to our clients, our patients, our partners, or our children. The question is more radical and more uncomfortable. Are we willing to give up our ready-made answers to welcome the other’s question? Are we willing to see without already knowing what we are seeing?
Listening, after all, is not a rare talent. It is an ethical choice. A way of being in the world that recognizes in the other not a problem to be solved, but a presence worthy of attention. And perhaps it is precisely there, in this simple and demanding gesture, that something human still resists.
References
- Han, B.-C. (2015). The Burnout Society.
- Han, B.-C. (2017). Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power.
- Rosa, H. (2019). Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World.
- Dejours, C. (2014). La banalisation de l’injustice sociale
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