The phrase, 'thinking out loud'

Sometimes I like the sound of my own voice and sometimes I don't, sometimes I just want to listen to others, not so much to hear what they're saying but to take the time necessary to hear myself listening. It's in those moments when I'm really listening that I feel how much energy it takes to listen. I'm not about to say that listening's a more difficult and demanding thing than speaking, though it is. My whole life's been trained to speak and to hear myself that way, out loud, to have myself be heard as if being heard is some sort of major proof of my life.  And so the energy necessary to really listen seems as challenging to me as breaking any sort of habit seems; listening, I feel like I'm taking away something vital to my life, something I think I can't live without, the sound of my own voice. Listening, I come as close as I've ever come to becoming a saint in a world where I know there are no saints. Still, I think it's possible I might come to the place someday where my listening becomes my speech and my speech my listening.