Why You Should Dare To Be Heard

In 1994, in an attempt to start a newsletter for creative side hustlers, I accidentally wrote a book called How Much Joy Can You Stand? It took all of three weeks to write it down, and it poured through me in an unprecedented rush. I’m moved to share it with you… as a big piece of self-care IS finding your right work. That special thing you do that brings you great joy… This is an essay from How Much Joy Can You Stand?

 

So, you want to be a venture capitalist, write a screenplay, or open a Victorian tea garden like the one you visited once in London and never forgot. So, you want to do anything slightly risky that demands a personal vision.

You? … You?  says the voice, as it collapses on the floor in gales of laughter.

Who do you think you are, anyway?

For many of us, this is where the conversation about pursuing our dream begins and ends. Because, let’s admit it — we’re sensible people. We’re not the sort who takes huge, wild risks. We’re not the slightest bit visionary. We don’t have a lot of high-minded thoughts that keep us awake at night, and God knows we don’t know the first thing those other, more successful people must have known before they set off to realize their dream. We’re just … us. Basic. Flawed. Certainly nothing special. 

Actually, when you get right down to it, we think we don’t really even deserve to have a dream.

Still, we do have this annoying idea that keeps surfacing and resurfacing, begging to be explored, teased out, played with, and realized. We keep having these oddly ambitious stirrings we don’t completely understand. So we do what we have always done: we ignore them. 

After all, we’re just not the kind of people who go off half-cocked after some so-called dream. Right?

The truth is that people with creative impulses need to create, no matter how “uncreative,” sensible, logical and otherwise non-impulsive they consider themselves.

If we have a pressing idea, we also have an obligation to explore it – and possibly express it. And yet we almost never do. We subscribe to a weirdly common belief that no one wants to hear what we have to say.  No one wants to know about our great new idea, patronize a business we might start, attend our would-be productions, or give us any kind of a break. No one.  We feel as if the world were just waiting to flatten us with some great, universal sledgehammer.

This is the soft, dark underbelly of all dreams, the part that’s hovering in the shadows, hoping to derail you. And, this is the first and seediest demon you will have to confront on this path. The really annoying part is that the demon is you.

All that supposed rejection is nothing more than your own twisted imaginings. When examined in the cool, rational light of day by other, more benevolent people, your own contribution usually merits a much greater response than you could ever imagine.

I will never forget the first time I performed my cabaret act — a two-woman show in which my partner and I wrote and sang all our own music. For months and months we’d worked on the act, composing, harmonizing, writing lyrics, choreographing moves, all the while convinced that what we were doing was good but strange.

At least I believed no one in their right mind was actually going to like this stuff, though we might get some polite applause. In fact, we only kept going because we were having fun. 

Then, our opening night rolled around. As we stood on the stage singing our first number, a curious thing happened. People began to smile. They nodded, and sat up a little straighter as if they were actually listening, and then a miracle occurred … they laughed. All of them. Loudly, even.

The audience got the first joke in the lyrics, then another, and another. They laughed in places I hadn’t even anticipated. Like some fantastic flying machine lumbering into that sacred moment of lift-off, the act was working. And just then I fully understood the impact of what my partner and I had created and it shocked me. 

I was someone worth listening to. People actually wanted to hear what I had to say.

The common disposition among us is a painful sort of shyness. People get embarrassed when called forth to be themself for even a millisecond in front of others. The core belief is that since nothing I say matters to anyone, and so I will end up looking like a dork. This is the precise feeling that keeps people from feeding their dreams.

Oddly enough, that snickering voice of doubt never really goes away. Years go by and you get somewhat used to it, as you learn to test the waters more and more, and eventually the voice slides from an obnoxious bellow into more of a background drone.

Witness the famous acceptance speech Sally Fields made on winning her second Oscar: “I guess you really do like me, don’t you?” Observe the fact that Truman Capote was once quoted as saying he’d never written anything he thought was really  good. Not even “Breakfast At Tiffany’s.” Jane Austen wrote of her work, “I think I may boast to myself to be with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.”

The point is this: no matter what you take on, insecurity is part of the job description.

It’s not possible to blaze new trails and forge your own path while remaining on familiar ground. If you want to start a business, you will take on financial risk. If you want to move to another part of the country, you must plunge yourself and whomever is attached to you into the unknown. If you want to try any endeavor you care about, you’re going to have to kick it out of that cozy little nook it has carved in your soul. And you’re going to have to stand there and watch your dream as it takes its first baby steps towards fulfillment. 

This is not an experience for people who crave comfort. Writer Raymond Carver likened publishing his stories to riding at night in the back seat of a driverless car with no lights on. 

And yet, such vulnerability can be a valuable part of the creative process. An acting teacher I once knew insisted that serious doubt is actually a very good sign, a signal that you’re being completely honest and vulnerable in your work. Mark Twain said of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, “I like it only tolerably well… and may possibly pigeonhole it [hide it in my desk], or burn the manuscript when it is done.”

As for me, I only know that I got through the first novel I published by convincing myself no one would ever read it. I was sure that this was yet another little piece of my own personal weirdness that no one would ever have to sit through. And yet, a major publisher actually published it. And people read it.

Daring to be heard, then, is simple. It’s recognizing your cascades of self-doubt for what they are: a whole lot of hot air you’ve cooked up for absolutely no good reason at all. Then, it’s mustering up the courage to trust yourself for five minutes anyway, because maybe you really do have something important to say. And ultimately, it’s about saying, “What the hell.”

Daring to be heard means recognizing that if you put your voice out there, all you’re going to get back is a yes or a no. The days of public stoning are long over; so is being pilloried. In fact, a large part of the world won’t even be paying attention, no matter how loudly you scream.

Daring to be heard, ultimately, is something great you do for yourself. It’s like giving your poor, withered soul some fresh air and sunshine. Daring to be heard means stretching out languorously in the luxury of a strong opinion, or basking in the joy of planning an endeavor you’ve always wanted to start.

No matter what your medium, the dream is yours and yours alone to realize in your own particular way. With the dream comes the chance to represent yourself to the world in a way that truly matters. Daring to be seen and heard becomes your chance for perfect freedom.

It becomes your chance to fly.

From How Much Joy Can You Stand, by Suzanne Falter ©2014 www.suzannefalter.com  

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