You have the right to remain silent. But I hope you won’t. The world conspires to hold us back, but it can’t do that without our permission. […} What do you sound like when you sound like you?*
(Seth Godin)

It’s always an evolving conversation between self and society. It’s always balancing tensions and trying to live life in grace and balance.**
(David Brooks)

It’s astonishing how we can so quickly identify the voice of someone calling us, but there’s way more to a voice’s uniqueness than this. We are all capable of speaking out new things from the depths of our lives, from the things that have caught our attention and captivated us.

And yet we have learnt that life is more straightforward if we keep quiet or sound like everyone else, but that’s survival rather than thriving. We are meant to add our voices to the great conversation taking place between the richness of individual lives and the richness of society. This is nothing less than a a quest of mythological proportions, as mythologist Joseph points to in the hero’s journey:

The whole idea is that you’ve got to bring out again that which you went to recover, the unrealised, unutilised potential in yourself.^

We can use our voices to drown others out or to ask a question and open a space for listening. I choose the latter.

(*From Seth Godin’s The Practice.)
(**From David Brooks’ The Second Mountain.)
(^From Joseph Campbellll’s The Hero’s Journey.)