Have you lost your voice?
“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.”
― Ernest Hemingway
Martha Tinsdale is my second most favorite character, after Cassie, on the Good Witch movies/TV Series.
Martha is the Mayor of Middleton. Dramatic, boisterous and vocal, Martha loves publicity! In the episode in question, she had lost her voice prior to an important and very strategic press conference. This was obviously a big deal but on doctor’s orders, she passed up the opportunity and conceded to having someone else give her speech — not without kicking and screaming though. However, that brief moment of being denied something that she loves didn’t make her any less the Mayor. Did she make a comeback? With all the aplomb and drama that is synonymous with being Martha.
I started watching Season 5 recently and was captivated by one of the episodes because it reminded me of a post I had written a few years back.
I had a bad cold and I lost my voice. For a full week.
That had never happened before!
It was just a cold, as usual. But there was nothing usual about the symptoms, or lack of, thereof. My voice disappeared for no reason. And nothing was going to bring it back before it was done being gone.
In order not to strain myself thereby making a bad situation worse, my response to calls were texts messages saying, ‘unable to speak, please text!’ If emails were a voice, my signature would have included the phrase: ‘forgive the silence, voice gone!’ It was altogether, not a funny experience.
Alas! I learnt two things though: first, I understood what a really horrible thing it is not to have your voice; more so if you had one and then lost it. The frustration of being unable to vocalize my thoughts was acute. Made even more crazy because most people expected me to explain what happened. It got so bad that I seriously considered putting a sign on my forehead that said, ‘DO NOT TALK TO ME PLEASE’.
The second (and the most important) thing I learnt was that it is okay not to be your usual self sometimes — in this case, being without a voice. If only so that you could listen better, or concede to others, or just be. I had an outing with friends during this period that I didn’t want to miss so I joined them. It was hours of memorable fun without me speaking and that was okay; I didn’t feel out of place. It was an opportunity to be quiet for once! It may look like I had no choice, but I was bent on going through with the evening’s event with grace. It felt good to hear others talk and to just listen, smile and laugh without feeling that along with losing my voice, I had lost the essence of who I am, to them or to me. I felt completely confident that even though I am missing something at the moment, it does not make me less of a person, or less special. What is more, listening without the intention of replying made me hear much more than was said.
Our present world is one in which listening (or just being quiet for that matter) is a problem, everything is on the fast lane, you must get your thoughts out there before someone else gets ahead of you. Companionable silence is almost unheard of, everyone agitates to fill in ‘silent vacuums’, and when we sit with the bereaved we feel compelled to say something, sometimes making a bad situation worse. We jostle to be heard and seen simply because the tools that facilitates it is at our finger tips; a state of affairs that robs some people of the ability to think clearly, thread softly and wisely. More often than not, committing unnecessary social faux pas.
Still, it is in this same world that I dare to advocate that we, from time to time deliberately consider ‘losing’ our voices if that is what it will take to listen more so we can actually hear. That we might ultimately be able to articulate what needs to be said clearly and succinctly. I am not denying the fact that listening completely without speaking is an easy feat, far from it. But practice makes perfect!
Imagine a world where there is no compulsion to respond before we have heard. True, the loss of something dear, something that is a large part of who we are and which defines us could rob us of our self-confidence, but the loss is just that, a temporary one, depending on how you approach it. That we are without our voices for a season does not take away from who we are except we give it the power to be so. Martha did not stop being the mayor simply because she could not hold her place at one press conference!
It may be your voice, but then again…
As difficult as it may seem, we must learn to listen more, now more than ever because a lot is at stake. So much is crying to be heard.
Be free oh.
