A Spark by Innocent Mwatsikesimbe from Questions Asked, chapter 5

The voice doesn’t get louder when you finally hear it. It was speaking all along, at the same low volume; what changes is the room. External influence — pace, obligation, everyone else’s agenda — doesn’t argue with the inner person so much as drown it out, the way traffic drowns out someone talking softly beside you.

So the work isn’t straining to listen harder; it’s subtraction. “It’s important to slow the pace down and understand what it is that you are doing and why.” Innocent’s way of making that quiet is a single question, asked at decision points and in moments alone — am I happy? — which clears enough silence to “really listen to your inner being.”

A voice that low will never win a shouting match, and it never tries. That’s what the gentleness means: the inner person won’t fight for your attention, so the quiet has to be made on purpose, again and again.