We can listen to injustice – and make sure we hear the message

THE EVENTS in America over the past week have not been far from my thoughts. George Floyd’s death has been both sickening and beyond heartbreaking in equal measure. While it is easy to say that such things do not happen on our shores, I for one have felt my own privilege more keenly then I have ever done before and know in my heart that the time for true equity has long since passed and something must be done.

It made me reflect on how true change is really effected, but what can we do? Initially

I felt that I was ill-placed to do anything at all. Who was I, in my privilege, having never walked in a life of discrimination, to be involved? However, the words of Martin Luther King sprung out at me – ‘‘a riot is the language of the unheard’’ and of course there is something that each and every one of us can do, irrespective of the shoes we walk in, which is to listen.

However, as humans we are, innocently, fairly poor at listening. What we are really good at is hearing how the other person sees their world, we then compare it to how we see it and then share with them how our view is correct. We listen purely to respond. I had a really good example of this recently between two friends: both had very differing points of views but instead of listening to the other, each was seeking to convince the other that their version was the correct one, pointing out why each conflicting aspect was wrong. Both believed that they were listening to each other and that they understood each other, but neither could see how little they had actually heard of the other’s point of view and neither had shifted their position as a result of their conversation.

In any walk of life, if we seek to understand the challenges someone faces, we must first be prepared to listen openly, with nothing on our own mind. It can be a tricky task to do, as often we will have something on our mind, whether it may be that we don’t believe that we can help or that the task is too big, or maybe that we have tried before, or that we think we know already what the challenge they face is, or even our own personal thoughts about our own lives might creep in. It is imperative that we put those thoughts to one side, and listen with a clear mind. Because only when we are in a clear mind can we really deeply listen to what the other person is experiencing; it is only then that we can even begin to understand.

Listening in this way raises our own awareness of the issues – we gain a deeper understanding. It is from this place of understanding that we can not only look deeper into ourselves, to challenge and explore our own conditioned beliefs and ideas that can unconsciously lead to treating others unfairly, but we can then use our position of privilege to challenge the inequity we see in our own society – collectively we can make that change.

The most important impact of deeply listening in this way is the experience of the listened, in that they are properly heard.