Hearing and listening are related.  Seems pretty obvious to me, but it isn’t always thought of that way.  I have tried to coach people to use their hearing better to listen, and have sometimes encountered the perception that hearing and listening are both totally passive activities.  In listening we make sense of what we hear, from the sounds and their meanings, themselves, to the more complex overlays of meaning.  If you get hearing aids, get ones that do a good job, and then think about listening.

There is such a thing as selective listening, and indeed there is such a thing as selective hearing.  We use both, but they are different.  Our brain learns to tune out sounds that we don’t want to hear.  That’s selective hearing.  Selective listening has much more to do with attention.  However, if hearing is damaged, so that hearing and listening is more fatiguing, then the appearance or reality of simply “not listening” slips in.