A Voice in the Crowd
All my life I’ve been told that my voice doesn’t matter.
Among the masses, I’m drowned out by louder people, pushing me away and calling me insignificant. I’ve been a silent surveyor, watching the play unfold before me without taking any part in it. I’ve always seen myself as part of an audience. Paying my ticket, I watch the play and have no say in the matter but am there to simply observe and quietly judge with what little knowledge and expertise I possess. If I dislike what I see, it’s simply to be blamed on my ignorance, my lack of intelligence, unable to see what goes on behind the scenes or simply not noticing the hidden stylistic choices and symbolisms.
If I do like it, it’s because it’s been tailored to my very taste and I have the playwright to thank on my bare knees for the excellent performance and I should be grateful to them by applauding their every word. Never am I to be left somewhere in the middle without an opinion for then I’m apathic, uninvolved and selfish.
Today, I’d like to be more than a set of eyes in a dimly lit theatre. From now on, I’d like to step away from the passive perspective of silently surrendering myself to the outcome of louder voices. Instead of hiding myself behind popular opinion or giving in to the idea of nihilistic apathy towards society, I’d like to convey a simple view on public matters from someone who doesn’t tower above in an ivory castle but rather from someone who walks the streets. Instead of someone quarantined from the ‘common masses’, I’d like people who breathe the same air as I do to come forward and speak their mind.
How easy it is to dismiss the ants we crush beneath our boots, for they lack the civility and refined tastes we ourselves possess. How easy it is to mistake the random woman working in retail for they never get to see them when they dine in high society, listening to the hypocritical voices in which tune they’ve started singing themselves. How easy it is to divide our world into them and us.
It isn’t easy to be the one in a silent group to speak out. It isn’t easy to resist the flow of society. It’s far from easy to be ostracized by others for we do not lack resilience nor resolve and refuse to fold to the whip stripping away our personal opinions and individual values. It’s anything but easy to not stand down when the world seems to be calling out to you, saying that you are wrong. When people in high positions with ample power sweep you under the rug as yet another insignificant gnat voicing unreasonable demands and unacceptable ideologies, it is hard not to bend and break.
I am still standing, I am still speaking. I too am alive. I matter.
I do not care for your position or your title. I have little time for your prestige or achievements nor will I spare the time to hear you say why your opinion should matter more than mine. I refuse to listen to your babbling about being content with what we have and accepting things as they are because “it is what it is”. In public life, there are two sentences that render us defenceless and which signify the end of dialogue and democracy.
“We’ve always done it this way,” and “It is what it is.”
I for one am not accepting rules, facts and realities for they’ve been always that way. Where would we be without the rebels and free thinkers like Galileo and Newton, like Socrates and Copernicus? Did they too not challenge public perspective and general knowledge which everyone agreed upon? Did they too not suffer under the same scrutiny we now use to deny people their voice if they do not give into the fold? Did they not resist higher powers for they believed in what they did, in who they were?
I am not calling for violence or disrespect for doing the same to them as they’ve been doing to us all along would make us the same miserable creatures, denying others their humanity. I call out for our voices to be heard, for us to think for ourselves. Listen to Socrates and second guess what we hear on television. Listen to Copernicus and investigate that which we doubt. Listen to Newton and look deeper into what matters to us and chase after our own truths and perspective. Listen to Galileo and resist the voices that would shut us up and lock us away in a void of insignificance. Stand up and be your own person with ideologies, beliefs, ambitions, thoughts, individualism, values and most of all, opinions.
Inform yourself for the world is so much smaller to those who refuse to listen.
Open your eyes and see to the wonders you can’t explain and be fascinated by what escapes your grasp. Don’t look away in terror and horror from what does not fall within your world perspective but sweep away at the fundamentals upon you’ve built that world and create something anew. Life is a lot more interesting if you experience it with an attitude of curiosity rather than shutting out all that is foreign, alien and unknown. Be swept away by the exotic, be fascinated by that which you can’t understand. Go to where you’ve never been before and explore the ideas that never made sense.
Stand as one and unify our voices, not because we all want to say the same thing, but because we all have something to say.
Made live on twitch.tv/darthlaser 29/10/2018.
