It takes courage to share your ideas.
It takes courage to receive the resulting commentary that comes after sharing your ideas.
It takes courage to revise your ideas when that commentary makes you see those ideas with new light or understanding.
It is vital to share our ideas, and how do we build the courage needed for this share?
What can we do?
The desire to share ideas
I was born with the desire to share ideas. I loved to notice, think, and decide. Early moments of idea share remain vivid in my mind. I remember a moment in kindergarten when I noticed what I remember as 12-foot windows that rose from floor to ceiling. I thought those windows and the light that shine through were beautiful. I wanted to share that thought. I also remember translating ideas about winter sports and fun into a beautiful paper-cut collage with classmates that year, and also telling the teacher that I had been to the Boston Public Gardens as she read the classic story, Make Way for Ducklings. As I think about it, from my earliest days, I enjoyed synthesizing what I noticed, what I experienced, and what I was newly learning altogether. The windows introduced me to the notion of architectural design and inspiration. The paper-cut collage taught me that we can recreate our experiences for others and ourselves via images and words, and the Make Way for Ducklings story showed me how people can create stories that occur in places that they've visited. The excitement that synthesis of experience, observation, and new knowledge brought me beckoned me to share with conversation, writing, and drawing. It wasn't a matter of courage early on, but instead it was the desire to share the excitement and new ideas I felt and understood.
The desire to make better
In many ways, I have always liked to problem solve. I was always trying to solve problems in our home. As I think back, my mother had to have a lot of patience with me since I was always telling her how to do her job as a mother. I can imagine my many bosses and teachers over time, smiling as they read this and thinking that I also tried to tell them how to do their jobs too. Some may refer to this as bossy, but honestly, it was my will to make better that propelled this share. Why wasn't I content with the way things were--why didn't I just mind my own business and move on with my life? I guess it's because I have always noticed opportunity for betterment. As I've recalled time and again, I spent most of my childhood evenings drawing my dreams on pads of paper I kept under my bed. Those dreams typically involved adventurous family life in beautiful places. I loved imagining what life could be, and I still love that activity today--an activity that fills my blogs, hand-written/drawn journals, and conversations.
The search for truth and understanding
In school, the hunger to share my thoughts continued. As you can imagine, my hand was always up in every class I attended. As I listened, I came up with questions, new ideas, and wonderings that I wanted to share. I loved rich conversations with instructors and classmates, and carried on the thoughts and ideas to my own reflection, writing, and conversations outside of school.
In fact, because of my need to constantly share, I had to come up with an algorithm to speak less so that I didn't take up the lion's share of classes. I came up with the ABZ theory of share which was that if my share was related to ABC. . .or elementary, obvious ideas, I would not share, and instead I'd share the Z ideas or questions--the far reaching and more complex information that I was interested in. This served me well as a student. I also learned to jot my question in the margin of my notes to reflect on later with the teacher by myself at home via research and reflection--this too worked to quell my eager desire to discuss ideas.
The courage to put my ideas out there for the greater community
The courage came naturally to share my ideas at home, school, in relationships, and at work, but when it came to sharing on the greater stage of life, that truly took more courage--courage and skill I continue to work at today.
Mostly I felt safe sharing ideas amongst those I know and in situations I was committed to, but to share with a community of unknown individuals, that was a different challenge. This type of share started with my own quest to understand. At a point of struggle in life, I sought answers via Google searches on the Internet. I simply typed in the exact question I wanted to understand and up would pop multiple answers to my question. As I read the answers, I gained greater wisdom and benefitted from those who courageously were willing to share their life stories including the challenges they faced. Their stories empowered me and introduced me to ideas I didn't know about before. Some may say that this information was available to me via books before the Interenet, and while this is true, the ability to lead my quest for knowledge via question-driven searches was much more beneficial to me. I could learn a lot in short time without the often laborious business of reading entire books. Suprisingly, as I got better and better at finding answers to my questions on the Internet, my reading ability improved with both speed and strategy, and my Google searches led me to read incredible books that increased my ability to learn, know, and understand.
Then, when trapped in a very challenging situation, I began sharing that situation without individual names or identifiable facts to bear witness to the struggle I was facing. I knew I had to have a record of that terrible time, a record to return to should I need it in the future. I also didn't want others to experience the pain I was experiencing so I offered my story to anyone who would find it helpful in their own quest to live well. I had benefitted from so many people's first-hand stories and wisdom, and I wanted to offer the same source of support to others too. This rationale gave me the courage to share initially. Then the more I wrote, the more I was able to learn and understand both my path and the path of others--my writing began to build my capacity for better living in countless ways, and that reality gave me courage to write more.
Writing as my livelihood
Every morning I wake up with ideas to write about. I continue to love synthesizing experiences, observations, and new ideas. I like coming up with metaphors that explain life's events. I also enjoy testing out new ideas via my blogs, and noticing how people react to those ideas. Not only do I love the ideas, creativity, and craft of writing, but I also enjoy moving my fingers along the keys--it's like playing a piano for me.
The next step clearly is to hone this craft in ways that matter most. I'm not exactly sure where that will take me, but now that I have time to commit to this craft, I'll take the journey one step at a time. If you have ideas for me, please share them.
In the meantime, and in summary, it does take courage to share your ideas, and gaining that courage is a journey itself. We're lucky to live in a time when so many wonderful ideas are close at hand via the Internet, and the opportunity to share our own ideas is ever present too. What does this mean for us? How will this affect our evolution as a people? Where is the positivity in all of this? Onward.