Everybody has a voice. No voice is better or worse than another. Not long ago I had a conversation with myself and I asked myself, “Rickey what is your voice?” The first answer that came up for me was the word contrarian. All I could do was smile because that is exactly who I am. I am not a contrarian for the sake of being one, it comes natural to me.
A contrarian is a person with a preference for taking a position opposed to that of the majority view prevalent in the group of which they are a part. A contrarian’s style of journalism, for instance are you sugarfied, has been popular, but has also been the subject of severe criticism.
Are contrarians born or created? Perhaps its a little bit of both but I tend to lean on the side that we are born not created. It is our voice. It is our way of expressing ourselves. To me Jesus was a contrarian. Most people that are revered today were once vilified by many. In fact, if you examine history many contrarians only became popular posthumously.
My voice has never been mainstream as long as I can remember. For many years I would not embrace my voice because it was so radically different from what I heard other people were saying, doing and being. Today I cherish the uniqueness of what I say. I realize that no matter how carefully crafted my messages are there will be some people that simply don’t get what I say. It will be filtered through their own voice, the one that’s going on in their head.
The goal is to keep talking even though there may be many dissenting opinions. I believe there are two parts to having a voice. The first part is discovering exactly what your voice is and the second part is expressing it. It does you no good if all you do is talk to yourself in the shower. What you have to say will always help at least one person if even if that one is you.
My voice has been shaped over the years by some brilliant minds. Below are just a few that come to mind:
- Myles Munroe
- Mystery
- Neale Donald Walsh
- Dr. Wayne Dyer
- Bryon Katie
- Jerry Clark
- Jlicious
- Ester and Jerry Hicks
- Steve Pavlina
- Deepak Chopra
- Eckhart Tolle
- Gary Renard
- James Arthur Ray
- Lee Carroll
- Napolean Hill
- Robert Scheinfeld
- Seth Godin
- Shad Helmstetter
- Malcolm X
- Marter Luther King
- Revered Ike
- Minister Louis Farrakhan
- Dennis Kimbro
- Michael Benard Beckwith
- Malcolm Gladwell
- Will Smith
- Gary Vaynerchuk
- Eric Butterworth
I’ve been exposed to everything from bending reality to hearing someone channel through a non-physical entity so my voice is quite diverse. Having a voice is not about wanting everyone to agree or disagree. Having a voice is knowing that someone where out there — there is a place that we all will agree. I expect that my voice will polarize some people and I’m perfectly fine with that.
Having a voice means there’s never anything to defend. What would I be defending anyway? I believe my voice is rooted in love and to that’s all that really matters. Someday you all will agree with me I just don’t expect that to be right now.
That’s my spin on it.
No related posts.
