I have been thinking about censorship again, not in the sense of being a journalist, but in the sense of personal responsibility. Certainly as children are babies, we mothers spew everything they do out for everyone to read, and that levels off as we either get too tired to remember their names, or the child is embarrassed.
As employees, we censor ourselves because we do not want to get fired or we have signed NDA’s and do not want to be sued within an inch of our lives. That is an aspect that keeps our words to ourselves many times.
But personally, what keeps us quiet? I used to say every little thing that popped in my blonde little head. Now, maturity (don’t choke on that one you in the corner!) has tempered that ability to spout from the hip. There is more to it though. Which is stupid. People who know me, have met me, have decided to hang around me know that I’m blunt. I say what is on my mind often before I even know that I was having that thought. It is “my thing”.
Then why I am afraid of writing it again? Because someone from the past might laugh? An ex might point out to his friends “there is the psycho I was telling you about”. Fear chokes us, it throttles us, it holds us back. We hold our own self back because we afraid someone else is watching. Sure they are watching. Why shouldn’t they? They want us to fall. If they are an ex, they want to see that we are miserable. If they are a former colleague, they do not want to see that we went farther ahead in life than they did.
Stepping out into our own success is what life is about, and the people who are holding us back, censoring us? It is their problem not ours. We can not own that. The fear that they are watching, it has to stop.
I am talking to myself.
