“You are invited to say what is in your heart, trusting that
your voice will be heard and our contribution respected. Your truth may be
different from, even the opposite of, what another person here has said. Yet speaking
your truth is simply that—it is not debating with, or correcting, or
interpreting what another has said. Own your
truth by remembering to speak only for yourself. Using the first person “I”
rather than “you” or “everyone” clearly communicates the personal nature of
your expression”
This particular touchstone spoke to me the most because to
me speaking my truth is one of the hardest things to do, because it’s usually
met with a backlash of criticisms and people policing my feelings. My truth isn’t
a statistic nor is it factual. I can’t base it on hard evidence but only claims
to my personal experiences of how I view the world. Feeling opposite is a
really difficult thing to push through. Even though I enjoy having discussions
and being critical of what I see, read, and witness every day. I still get a
huge gut wrenching feeling when I’m about to share any opinion I have.
The
first thing I read out loud in my English 102 class was a section of one of the
ancillaries we had to write, in this moment I have forgotten the context of my
writing but I do know that I was so nervous and effected by this overwhelming
feeling of self-doubt. I was shaking and
finding it hard to recite my own words. The line “own your truth” is something
that really struck me with this one although it’s a very short statement it’s a
very powerful one that suggests confidence in your words.
Often I find that I want to shut myself in because of the
way I feel. Being alone is a much safer environment to have your truths and be
unmet with judgment. A line in Sylvia Plaths’ Apprehensions reminds me of my
struggle with my truth and harboring it alone “is there no way out of my mind?” But often I feel like I would be living the
same year over and over again if I stuck to that mindset. To me this touchstone is everything I need to
work on. I am always apprehensive about what
I say or do even though I consider myself to be a very open kind of person. Or at
least I always work toward being open with different subjects although I can be
very passionate by nature.
I guess the most I got out of this touchstone is that finding
your confidence is a key factor towards finding a space to work together with
people comfortably and productively. Without confidence the focus can be lost
any point or context in our words comes across less rich if we lack the
backbone to stand for it. The fact is everyone sees the world through a
different lens. People have different truths because they are different people.
But it isn’t impossible to sit in a room with people and appreciate their
words, and more importantly their truth.
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