In the sixth grade, I became friends with a wonderful person—we’ll call her “Alice.”  Alice is gifted with a phenomenal singing voice.  Her mother was part of the music program at our church, and I often heard the personnel there speak with admiration about how lovely Alice’s voice was.  I sat beside Alice in choir for several years, attended the same middle school, high school, and college, even rooming with her for two semesters.  And looking back on all that time we spent together, I can honestly say that I have never heard Alice sing alone.  In the choir room, with fifty other voices, yes.  But by herself?  Not once!  I have no doubt that she can do so, and do so magnificently.  Alice is not a prideful person, and those that have heard her sing are surely not all lying.  But the truth is that Alice refuses to sing solo for just about anyone.  I’ve always thought it was a shame. 

However, looking back at the last two weeks, I must admit that I have been scolded harshly both by my mother and my best friend for withholding my latest work from them.  And by my latest, I mean anything I’ve written in the past year.  Maybe longer.  I’ve remedied that since, and they were each extremely complimentary and encouraging.  But I’m afraid this tendency to hide my work away runs deep.  My husband, an artist, shows me every one of his pieces, sometimes at several different points through his process.  Yet even he very rarely gets to see any of my work. 

This problem is serious for a writer.  How can I hope to send my work to editors, to say, “Here, this deserves a place in your journal.  Publish it!” when I can’t even bear to show it to my mother, my best friend, and my husband, three of the likeliest people to be proud of me no matter what?

The only answer is that I can’t.  No one can legitimately hope to be recognized or admired for his or her potential alone.  Each and every one of us has to constantly strive to project our beauty out into the world.  And if we fail, and our poem or our painting or our song doesn’t shine as brightly as perhaps we thought it might, then so what?  What would be worse: To send a few attempts at wit or loveliness out into world and have them casually ignored?  Or to deny someone the opportunity to read your words?  All of us have had that stirring experience of reading a poem or short story and thinking, “Yes, that’s it exactly,” and breathlessly sending it a friend that you know will feel it just as deeply.  What merit would that same poem have if it were locked up in one selfish person’s hard drive forever or shuttered away in a desk drawer? 

And so, I conclude with the words I have been whispering to myself over the past few weeks and months:  Be bold.  You have something to say.  Somewhere, there is someone ready to listen.