Gate 13 · The Listener

What it is like

People leave their stories with you, often without asking if you have room for them. Listening is your gift, though afterwards it can be hard to keep their stories apart from your own.

When someone close has it

People tend to say more than they meant to around someone with this gate. Now and then, ask how they're doing with everything they hear.

A question for today

Whose story am I carrying today, and do I need to keep holding it?

The six lines of gate 13

1. Line 1 · At the Threshold

   This line listens from the threshold before it lets someone's story in deeper. You want first to understand who is speaking and from where, and only on that ground do you make room for the rest of the story. In an ordinary conversation it shows in the questions you ask before you judge anything. Sometimes you spend so long at the threshold that someone leaves before saying what they came with.

2. Line 2 · Family Circle

   You listen without effort, especially to people close to you, and they find it easiest to leave their matters with you. You do not need to ask, someone sits down beside you and starts talking, because your presence works like an invitation. You do best in a familiar circle where nobody pretends. When you listen only to your own, it is easy to miss stories from outside that circle, which may say more than it seems.

3. Line 3 · Hidden Guard

   Here listening learns through mistrust, which sometimes proves right and sometimes does not. You hear a story out but keep something ready in the thicket, in case someone wants to turn it against you. Every disappointment and every pleasant surprise teaches you whom it is really worth trusting. When caution lasts too long, it is easy to wait for years for an attack that never comes and miss people who arrive in good faith.

4. Line 4 · On the Wall

   This line listens to people in its network and knows a lot about them, yet uses none of it against anyone. You climb the wall of other people's secrets and stop before turning them into a weapon, and that is exactly why friends trust you. Your influence on those close to you grows from what you do not pass on. Sometimes there are so many stories that you begin to run out of room for your own, and listening stops giving strength.

5. Line 5 · Tears Then Laughter

   Here others see you as someone who will hear them out at the hardest moment and carry them from tears to laughter. You can gather the scattered stories of many people and show what connects them, and this works in different groups and situations. People come hoping to leave lighter. When not everything can be solved by listening, it is easy to be left with someone's disappointment, which falls on you instead of on the matter.

6. Line 6 · Meadow Outside Town

   This line listens from afar, like someone standing in a meadow outside town and seeing all the life going on inside it. Over the years you need less to be at the centre of every story and understand better what connects them. Others learn from you how to receive other people's stories without taking them on. Sometimes the distance grows so large that people stop knowing you are still listening.

The centre of this gate

• G

Channels through gate 13

• 33–13 · The Witness