It’s impossible to know what the space between hears when we speak into it.
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Most of the time, we treat it just like air - nothingness, neutral, passive, waiting to be filled.
But what if the space between isn’t empty at all?
What if it is the field that listens?
All encompassing, fully and whole. Something that uses us to hear.
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For today’s perspective, we hand the story over to Listence itself. To hear from the space that listens, always, whether it’s noticed or not.
It had quite a day…
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This morning, someone ‘business-like and important’ entered me wearing an expensive suit. Running a little hurriedly from his last conversation and looking distracted.
He shook hands with authority.
He smiled with strategy.
He spoke as though words were weapons, and pauses were threats.
As if time were money.
Full of active listening, the other person nodded. Repeated his name. Wrote things down.
They nodded in time, smiled in rhythm, performed presence like a well-practised dance.
But no one listened.
They looked through me, over me and past me. Like I was empty.
They spoke as though connection was a tool, to be used and optimized.
And, they moved through me like I was empty - something to fill, use, shape.
I was not asked.
I was not felt.
I tried to hold them anyway.
I offered space, not as a platform but as a cradle.
They filled it with applause for themselves.
And when they left, I remained.
Flat and bruised.
Like something sacred had been rehearsed out of existence.
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After this encounter I reflected…
There was a time people moved slower through me.
When their words carried less aim and more wonder.
A time when a pause was never awkward, but sacred.
I remember when eyes met not to perform connection,
but because they forgot to look away.
Now, too often, I’m skipped over.
Like a track on a playlist no one has time for.
It isn’t anger I feel.
It’s an ache.
~
Later that day, two people sat across from each other.
One spoke Spanish. The other, English.
They smiled in mismatched rhythms.
One cried. The other didn’t ask why.
There was no shared language.
But there was me.
They didn’t fill me.
They leaned into me.
They looked, paused, stumbled.
And I… listened.
I listened not just to them, but with them, as them,
Not once did they try to fix each other.
Not once did they try to look good.
They didn’t use me.
They noticed me, they felt me.
And for that moment, I became wide again.
Felt like water.
Felt like earth.
I listened them into being.
And in that, I remembered myself.
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Whilst writing this post, I turned to a fellow advocate of this kind of space Marina Abramovic, this short film is very well known, but it so beautifully brings to life the power of the space between…
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We don’t always notice the space between.
But maybe it always notices us.
Maybe what feels like silence is actually listening.
Not our listening.
But the listening that was here before us.
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“They didn’t try to fill me.
They let me be.
And so I held them.”
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What shifts when we stop treating the space between as something we move through, and begin to sense it as the field where listening happens?
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Everything is always happening in the space in between. A communication, a relationship happens in the space between two persons. The space is paramount James.
I am always with you ... I am always within you ... not as space but as oneness, not as silence but as wholeness ... we are the space of creations breath happening between each flesh form filled
.. thank you for offering your words to us and prompting the aliveness within, i often find frustration in your words simply because i know them as definitive and want to say just say it ! ... like
We don’t always notice the space between.
But maybe it always notices us. (scratch but maybe ...) IT ALWAYS notices us.
thanks James