You can’t win every battle!
It’s more important to win the war!
Isn’t the war however the sum of battles fought?
I used to be passionate, intense, outspoken – meaning also putting a foot in my mouth more often than not. Not that I miss the latter. One small but sure step at a time I find that I am pushing myself into silence, into a not my monkeys, not my battle sort of attitude.
I have sat at tables this week ready to engage, prepared with fully carved out actions, ready to listen, ready to brainstorm, only to find myself halfway through my first expressed thought faced with a choice I had not gone into the room aware of: either you become silent right now and just let the others do the dance they are convinced is the perfect one and in fact the one you should just mimic, or create a difficult situation with your questions and alternate views. And this wasn’t the worrisome part, the desire to fight is not a stranger to me. The new addition to my own side of the table is a new voice, growing louder and louder saying come on, not worth it!.
The only time when I miss my twenties is when I realize that I see through things now that I am over forty. When I realize that I am now better able to tell bullshit from truth, humble competence from pompous halfassery, when I realize that my current gut feeling is more and more accurate and inversely proportional to my ability of agreeing with the ones in front of me just for the sake of them liking me … I miss my twenties these days. Sure, I lived a lie but it was definitely better PR.
My passion about my ideas, my views, my engagement and my learning has not yet died. That flame has not yet been completely extinguished. I am however making efforts to turn it lower and lower, maybe cover it completely sometimes, so as not to bother others or upset my own comfort. It’s a sort of just hush for a while type of effort. The small voice inside me whispers, terrified: what will become of you if that goes off?
Photo by Sebastian Pociecha on Unsplash
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Very true, I think people should at some points in their lives, take a backseat to find new perspectives and even strengthen passions upon allowing yourself to return to them. Perhaps keep a collection of reminders of how great it is to explore the world and ideas to remove some of that fear of losing the excitement of it. That is if you’re still in in this mindset, or if you are again in the future.
I enjoyed reading this, thank you 🙂
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