Deep listening – a personal journey

I am a brown-skinned man and I have spent most of my working life in the ‘civilized world’ world as an ethnic minority. Listening to other people’s perspectives, paying attention to their words and gestures, acknowledging their presence and needs, and being curious about what others have to say was not my usual reaction perhaps because of my childhood experiences. In fact, for the most part of my early life I was a poor listener, and, in most social interactions, I had a strong urge to prove myself right. This is the story of how deep listening came to me accidentally and how it transformed my life.