Embracing Your Call to Expression: What Is Your True Voice?

Timorous, apprehensive, anxious. I pressed the publish button and proceeded to sign myself out Facebook as fast as my trembling fingers would allow me to. 

In a courageous, albeit concerning moment I’d released one of my poems out into the world and now in my distress, I felt it was out there for the world to reject. 

What had I been thinking? Why had I allowed the outside into my unadulterated inner? What would they say? Would my writing be good enough?

The thoughts were unabating, wrecking the walls of my mind at a ridiculous speed, creating nothing but a mental mess of me. 

“I know, I’ll go delete it,” I said, giving in to the temptation of illusive reprieve. So as quickly as I logged out, I logged in again.

10 new notifications. S***. They’d seen it. 

Love, love, like, wow.

“Ushmi, would you mind if share this?”

“Ushmi, can you make your group public, please?” 

Oh, no. It was worse than I thought. Not wanting to lose face, I reluctantly agreed. My group became public, and the sharing of my poems, which spoke of wonder and a utopian world of delight began.

I’d go back to changing the settings of this group to private again, but it was this moment a few years ago that acquainted me with the finer, less glossy details of what it might look like to truly live my vision in the world.

You see, I imagine a world where bold self-expression IS allowed to be the status quo. 

And in this world I see the visionaries, way-showers and change-makers of our times, so deeply connected to themselves and their message, that the myriad of fears trying to stop them from expressing it, simply bounce off the back of their knowing: this message not only matters but it is necessary.

Yet, it took me time to really root myself in this vision. 

To believe that my message of wonder was good enough. That my words were adequate and that I could risk looking like an idealistic fool in the advocacy of it. 

And in that time that it took, what I learnt is that when you have something strong calling at you to be said, it doesn’t go away until you do. 

Far from random callings, I believe these messages are a new world speaking, asking for unique expression through each one of us. 

So I ask you, what are you being called to express, that when you do makes our world an even richer, more enlivening place?