The world needs your voice
Inertia — 207
"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
— Maya Angelou
I’ve learned a lot about being comfortable with upsetting people. Not because I want to or am trying to, but because there’s a space between silence and noise where my voice deserves to live. Where it can wait, patient as winter, until I’m ready to grab it.
If you guide your life against the worry of being disliked, you will become miserable. You will fold yourself smaller, swallow your words like bitter medicine, and mistake this new invisibility for virtue. The world has taught many of us that humility means disappearance and that to be good is to be barely there at all. But people are teaching you that for their own gain.
Humilty isn’t about making yourself small. It’s about understanding your proper size in the world—no bigger, but crucially, no smaller either. I’ve struggled in the past to bring my voice to where it needed to be, flinching and numbing myself during interpersonal friction.
But listen: The essence of humility is being profound, so don't let it turn into a lack of confidence or low self-esteem. The world wants to hear you, but it is your job to ensure your voice is heard.
It helps to remind yourself that it’s just feelings you’re afraid of. The person or people listening don’t hate you; they’re hardly thinking about you. What people have or may say in your mind can haunt you, follow you through quiet mornings and restless nights. But you just have to get comfortable with your stomach churning until you feel liberation.
I asked a highly successful person for their best advice and it was to raise your voice. It’s a theme among high performers because your voice also matters in ways you cannot measure. The voices that have changed you, for example—some belong to famous figures who were once ordinary people who just chose to speak. I think about my teachers who believed in me enough to stay with me after school hours, the friends I value a great deal because say the hard truths no one else does. The stranger who said smiled at me before I even looked back and exclaimed, “Good morning!” with such energy that it charged my soul for several hours after.
None of them changed the world. But they changed my world.
This is the power we all carry: the ability to breathe words that might alter someone’s direction. It’s my aim with writing and something I’d be most proud of in life to achieve. Be the lantern for other people when darkness closes in on them. As small or big as you like.
Otherwise, a voice unheard changes nothing.
Most people don’t care, and that’s fine. But if you’re continuing to read this, your mind is special and you should take more steps forward.
I've learned, slowly and painfully, that waiting to be discovered is a luxury few of us can afford. Opportunity rarely knocks—it passes the doors of those who haven't announced their presence. The most essential opportunities must be chased, cornered, and claimed.
Your brilliance helps no one if kept locked away. Your wisdom heals no wounds if left unspoken. And your unique perspective solves no problems if perpetually withheld.
The world needs your voice not despite your flaws and limitations, but because of them. Your struggles have taught you languages others don't speak, while your journey has granted you wisdom that exists nowhere else.
To withhold that voice isn't humility—it's a sad tragedy.
So speak up in meetings even when your heart feels like it’s hammering against your ribs. Send the email proposing your idea before you've convinced yourself it's worthless. Apply for the position before you've checked off every qualification. Share your story before you're certain it's important enough.
Be proactive because your unique combination of experiences and insights will never exist again once you're gone. It's about impact and refusing to let your gifts evaporate unused.
The truest form of humility is knowing that your voice matters because you matter.
The world wants to hear you. But it's your job to ensure you’re heard.
And when you finally speak with the full weight of your voice—not perfect, not flawless, but genuinely yours—you'll discover that in being heard, you make it safer for others to be heard, too. And that might be the most important thing any of us can do.