7 Habits of Highly Deep People

Depth is often the scar tissue of wounds transformed.

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On a long train ride from Manchester to London, I once sat beside an older man with a weathered copy of Meditations in his lap. I asked him why he read Marcus Aurelius so often. He smiled and said, “Because it reminds me to look inward before I look outward.”

For the next two hours, he spoke about the architecture of stations we passed, the habits of commuters, and the silence of rivers that ran parallel to the tracks. His voice was calm, unhurried, not designed to impress. He was, in every sense of the word, a deep person.

Depth is not about intelligence or vocabulary. It is about presence. Some people move through the world like stones skipping on a pond; fast, noisy, impressive for a moment before vanishing. Others sink slowly, quietly, and reach the bedrock. Their influence is less dramatic but more enduring.

I have come to notice certain patterns in people like the man on the train.

First, they ask more questions than they answer. I once had dinner with a woman who had lived through war, migration, and the loss of her partner. I was bracing myself for heavy stories, but instead she asked me about my family, my writing, my fears. She seemed more interested in drawing out my life than in rehearsing her own. I left the restaurant feeling strangely enlarged. Depth listens before it speaks.

Second, they are comfortable with silence. Many of us rush to fill gaps in conversation, afraid of being thought boring. Deep people know silence isn’t empty; it’s fertile. Sitting with them, you feel permission to breathe. I remember a mentor who once let a question hang for so long I thought he hadn’t heard me. When he finally answered, his words carried the weight of the pause.

Third, they read slowly. In a culture addicted to speed and summaries, deep people savour words. They return to the same page, underline the same line, wrestle with it until it yields meaning. The man on the train didn’t boast about how many books he’d read; he was still digesting the same Roman emperor centuries later.

Fourth, they notice details others miss. A friend of mine, a photographer, once interrupted our walk to point out how the shadows of leaves trembled differently on the pavement than on the wall. It wasn’t profound in itself, but it was attention. And attention, as we’ve said before, is the purest form of generosity.

Fifth, they integrate pain. I have never met a deep person who hasn’t suffered. But what distinguishes them is that they let suffering carve them open instead of sealing them shut.

As bell hooks wrote, “To be loving is to be open to grief, to be touched by sorrow.”

Depth is often the scar tissue of wounds transformed.

Sixth, they resist the shallow economy of attention. They are not constantly refreshing feeds or measuring their worth in likes. Their gaze feels uncommodified. They are capable of being somewhere without announcing it.

And finally, they live aligned. Their actions rhyme with their values. They do not need to convince you of their integrity; it hums quietly in their choices. Trust comes easily because you sense no split between performance and reality.

There is a proverb: Shallow rivers are noisy, deep wells are quiet. I think of that often when I feel myself skimming surfaces, chasing novelty, trading silence for noise. Depth is not about retreating from life but about entering it more slowly, more honestly.

The formula of shallowness is: If I appear interesting, I will be valued. The formula of depth is: If I live truthfully, my life will speak for itself.

The man on the train probably forgot our conversation the next day. But years later, I carry it still. That is the mark of depth: it lingers long after the surface has passed.

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