Finding Your Voice in a World that Just Keeps Talking
Even without a voice, dead and lifeless on the screen, the words stung like a harsh chemical getting splashed in my eyes. I blinked and ran the sentence through my head again.
Unless you are a saint or a genius or an otherwise historically significant person, why should anyone be interested in a book about your personal life?
A few days before, after finishing the final pages of the book Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, I typed up one of the longer and more profound quotes I loved and slapped it on my Facebook page. I knew that a few people inside my circle thought the book controversial, but I liked a lot of what his perspective had to say.
I didn’t expect to get nuked. A friend posted a long opinion of the book, and as I read through their thought out response, I pulled out this strong sentence and just stared at those words for a while. Then I decided that what I was reading really broke my heart.
What I read was, “If you want to say something, you have to matter.” I was nineteen years old, a college sophomore, learning pages worth of life every single day and hoping that I would have the opportunity to have a voice in the world around me. But I was not a saint, a genius, or a historical artifact. I will never be any of those things.
For a writer, for a dreamer, for someone fond of art and story, it was a really painful thing to hear.
You are too small to matter.
Who gives a care about your life.
What you create will never dent eternity.
Facing Obscurity
On October 31st, 2011, the United Nations announced that there were 7 billion people living on this planet. If you Google it now, a constantly ticking human odometer shows about 7.5 billion.
Tens of thousands of books are published and records are released every year in the United States. There are hundreds of nonprofit organizations and start-ups that are beginning, succeeding, and failing every day all over the world. Countless beings are painting, laying down lyrics, inventing a new system, researching an idea.
On top of all the good things that are coming into existence, there are also new problems birthed and escalating all the time. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, there are 11 wars and conflicts that are currently getting worse every minute. In that same minute, twenty-one children under the age of five die from a preventable cause. More families than we can count are breaking apart today. More dreamers than we can count are giving up today.
These realities always hit me like a load of bricks. Individually, I am so small in regards to people, events, history, and time that I often wonder what the point is. I could spend my whole life using my talents, using my voice, to try to say something meaningful or bring some hope to the darker places around me and in an instant — a flash — I will be forgotten.
Why even try?
Walking around Indianapolis recently, I spotted some text painted on the side of a dumpster. From a distance, the words were hard to read:
It made me pause for just a minute, and this is why. It could seem like an easy way out. “Ya, it may not matter if you make art, or if you do good, or if you fight for justice. Do it anyways though.” I’m not sure if I buy that.
But think about it. Someone painted those words. There was a strong chance that no one would give a care about that voice on the side of a dumpster in an alley across from a muddy river on a side street in a city populated by thousands in a country populated by millions in a world that is broken.
But I read that. I read those words and they mattered to me. And I shared those words in the hopes that they could matter to you, too. Doesn’t that just prove the point? We all are just little tiny drops in the ocean but if we never try, we will never get close to sending ripples to the people and situations that need us most.
Facing Excess
It’s true that there’s just so much of it. Opinions. Stories. News. Fake news. Art. Good art. Bad art. A million paperbacks. A hundred million websites. Blogs. Journals. Feeds. Pages. Voices. Songs.
A young child in the streets of Aleppo can tweet about the gassing of her people and the whole world can see. In our age, she has a voice — and that astounds me. A hundred years ago she would have been brushed aside and lost because no one had access to what she had to say. But the draw back to that very same access is the excess.
Just like every other person on this spinning globe, I want my voice to be important. I want to change the world for the better, to contribute my words and thoughts, to feel like someone out there hears me.
But I’m concerned. Even if I try anyways, and I hope that I won’t fade in obscurity, won’t I just be drowned in voices? In a world where everyone is talking, where everyone has a voice, can anyone actually really speak?
I don’t know if I have the exact answer to that. But consider this — no two people are exactly the same. We can share genes or names or history, but we are all different. This means that EVERY voice is unique. Every voice has something to say.
An author I love, Shauna Niequist, says it like this —
“I’m less and less interested in the ruminations of a scholar and more and more compelled by stories with grit and texture and blood and guts and humanity…The biggest, most beautiful story in the world deserves better than to be told by the same voices over again.”
We are all a part of one very complex story designed by God with many moving parts. Only you can tell your part and it needs to be told. The question then becomes less of the weight of your voice or the presence of your voice, but how, and what, you choose to speak about.
Facing Meaninglessness
When I first wrote a blog post and submitted it to the vast network of ideas the internet has to offer, nothing happened. I had one or two reads, and to be honest, they likely both were my mom.
This is the hardest thing to figure. I believe wholeheartedly that the stories that we tell are interconnected, play off of each other, and that is why they must be told. Like the most complex clock design you have ever seen, our interactions and words, our messages and greatest passions and displays of heart and soul intermingle and cause cogs and wheels of life to turn and sync. It’s just that we do not always get to see things moving.
Really, we hardly ever get to see things moving.
Some time ago, a friend named Nicole became my resident when I worked for housing on campus. One Saturday night, while I was off duty and watching Netflix alone in my room, I heard a knock on my apartment door.
Not wanting to be bothered, I ignored the rapping. A few minutes later, I heard it again. Knock knock. Again, I ignored it. If they tried a third time, I would cross my fingers it wasn’t someone who had lost their keys and open the door.
All was quiet and I went to bed — a typical boring weekend night in for me. In the morning, there was short text message on my screen from Nicole.
“Hey — this is super weird, but I just wanted to check in on you. Had this weird feeling that you needed me to see how you are tonight. Hope all is well!”
At that moment, it seemed minuscule. But months and months later, I wrote Nicole a letter. I told her that at that point in time, even though I couldn’t see it, I was incredibly alone and dealing with a lot of baggage and garbage. I needed someone to check in on me — and that simple gesture meant the world.
When it comes to impact, society wants to measure success on numbers or ratings or fandom or stardom. We want our art to be showcased, our words to reach hundreds, our efforts to play some critical role in saving or healing people.
But often it is not the loud banging that shakes the world, but the soft knocking.
Sometimes I hate the internet. I hate that someone posting about a celebrity haircut faux pas or an article laden in hate speech and bias can be read and shared by millions, while a heart wrenching tale of compassion or triumph could be trampled underfoot. So many have a chance today to speak, and with that, many will choose to waste that voice on the trivial or the mundane.
Please know today though that when you choose to value your story, when you choose to join in on a conversation that is uplifting and powerful, and when you empower others to use their voices to contribute to this intricate story line written by the master storyteller, you are not meaningless.
Owning your voice, taking responsibility for the story you know you need to tell, may not have immediate repercussions or visible aftermath. In fact, you may never see the good that you do or the hearts that you inspire.
The important thing is that you are finding your voice whether you think others can hear you, or not. Genius, or not. Celebrity, or not. Earth-shaker, or not. Reaching millions, or not.
We need YOU.
