I agree with Loeb's statement, "When we shrink from the world, our souls shrink, too."
Each one of us has become who we are today because of our experiences and interactions with others. We begin to lose our identity and purpose when we shrink from the world and isolate ourselves from others. Being involved in the community gives people a little window into our souls. Loeb says, "Community involvement, in other words, is the mirror that best reflects our individual choices, our strengths and weaknesses, our accomplishments and failures. It allows our lives to count for something." Those are some pretty powerful words and they really make me think about how my community involvement is a huge part of who I am. I asked myself, "Why would my life really matter if I didn't have others to share it with?"
As I was reading the book there were often times when I would read a phrase and think "This is so something I have done", specifically the comments on staying silent over public issues. The factor of fear (obviously the "F" word I was talking about) greatly plays into the reasoning behind my silence. I can think of a number of times where I didn't speak out because of the excuses I allowed my mind to create. In certain situations I might feel incompetent and worry that I won't sound intelligent enough or be able to back up my point with sufficient knowledge. Being afraid of sounding stupid or worrying too much about what others think causes me to hold back my thoughts more often than I should. It is something I try to overcome everyday because I can definitely see how it takes a toll on one's spirit and it isn't a very healthy thing. It is tempting to take the easy way out and just agree with what everyone else is saying, but I know that you will lose yourself in that process. I want people to know who I am and the only way to do that is to overcome fear and allow them to hear what I have to say.
For the most part I believe it is better to speak out, but there are some instances that I think are exceptions. If I am in an uncomfortable situation and I feel like the people in the conversation are not truly interested in hearing what I have to share, then I don't want to give them the satisfaction of picking apart and trying to refute everything I say. Those people tend to feed off of starting confrontations and arguments because it is their way of getting attention. They are just waiting for you to finish talking so that they can come back with an argument that is even better. That just seems like a waste of time to me. People need to have open minds and honestly be willing to hear opposing sides so that others will feel comfortable sharing their thoughts with them. In most situations, though, I believe speaking out is the right thing to do. People cannot read my mind so I cannot expect them to know how I feel if I don't tell them. It is doing a disservice to myself and to others when I hold back because I may have been able to bring something new to the table or just allowed people to learn more about who I am and what I believe in.
Hello Angela, what a great blog! I really agree with the part where you talk about not wanting to speak up for fear of sounding unintelligent. I used to worry about that. I just decided that to be understood is more important than to be thought intelligent. What I mean is that I hear so many people dance with a vocabulary that they don't know, they trip and wind up losing their audience by either putting themselves to far away from the audience that no one knows what they are hearing, or they use words wrong and the real "intelligent" people expose them.
ReplyDeleteI have honestly never thought of being involved in the world the way you talk about it above. In another blog's comments I talked about how pulling back and withdrawing from the world help's me remember who I am. Here is part of what I said, "Sometimes though, actually fairly often, I need to retreat from the deafening shrills of society, of our culture, to remember who I am. Often I take a step back and ask myself "Am I who I want to be? Do my actions reflect who I want to be?" If the answers are no, then I have some serious work to do. This world, man it's disorienting. It is so easy to lose yourself in all the noise."
I never thought that by withdrawing from the world one could actually "begin to lose our identity and purpose". Just goes to show how different we all are. Such great insight Miss Stokebrand!