Everyone Has To Have a Voice

Stop and think about that one before you move on. A voice can mean many things. There's a writer's voice, a speaker's voice, a physical human voice, a singer's voice and more. All of them have, at least to me, a common thread—and it's not the sound. To me, a voice is something that forms a bridge from what is within to what is outside. That sentence doesn't capture it exactly. To me it starts with a series of thoughts gaining conscious expression in my brain. Thoughts are coming together in some way, conveying a message. The process of learning to write from within your own head is about trust in your own thoughts—trust that they are yours alone and, probably uniquely assembled within you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay, "Self-Reliance," tells us "A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages... Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another." How often we receive the thoughts and sayings of the great sages, recognizing there our own rejected thoughts, to which we have not yet learned to listen.

This learning to listen to and trust your voice is not one of those things someone else can point out for you, or tell you where exactly to find it. You have to hear the voice, recognize and express it; and my sense is that it is called forth only when we decide deliberately to communicate it, to draw it out from within ourselves.

Sit down to write something, craft a speech to express something, or even a poem. It is said that Winston Churchill, arguably one of the most powerful orators of the 20^th century, composed his speeches first in verse form. When you try to call it forth, you begin to hear the voice within. The voice is within your own heart and mind. It is who you are, what you have experienced, and the life you have lived. No one else has lived it; it is unique, as are you.

The voice that emerges from within each of us, if we let it, can be read, or heard only if we express it. There are obstacles on the pathway from thought to expression. There is the failure to pay attention to the voice as Emerson pointed out, there is the drowning out that takes place amid the noise of day-to-day life. At times, we lack the capacity to put it into words that will adequately convey meaning. We may have trouble with the actual means of delivery—whether by writing or the human voice. The human voice relies upon a certain mastery of the lungs, the vocal folds and the articulators (cheeks, lips, and tongue and nasal passages). Vocal variety is something that can be learned, as can clear speech and other aspects of delivery. Aristotle would say that rhetorical skills are a must—think of rhetoric as "the truth plus its artful presentation." Written expression requires a certain mastery of (sad to say) grammar and spelling.

Possession of a truth is not enough (see the discussion of a tree that falls in the forest with no one hearing it), it must be expressed or the thought is lost. How do we learn those skills? By doing—write or speak whenever you can. If you don't, your voice will remain lost, and we will all be poorer for it.