I lost my voice. Not in the customarily Laryngitis sort of way
where a virus invades my vocal cords and suddenly I can’t articulate sounds
into words of conveyance. Nor by singing
favorite tunes in a higher than usual pitch.
Oddly enough, repetitive whispering puts as much strain on vocal chords
as screaming does; but all of that is purely physical apparatus of voice. I’m
talking about the voice of opinion had been silenced; and I was clueless to its
cause.
Perhaps clueless is not entirely accurate. If
I could muster up some genuine honesty in my reflection, I might admit I saw
resignation coming from years ahead. I just surmised that sooner or later I’d
become weary with protesting the outrageous; then inevitably it’d arrive
without a lot of fanfare. I recognized it was just a question of time before the
fruitlessness of shaking my fist at the Gods for what appeared as unrelenting
challenge to my happiness would become the norm; no one was listening. Or more
to the point, the God fashioned by years of religious tutelage wasn’t one I
could curry favor with nor intercede on my behalf purely because I obtained special
status through sacrifice or suffering. I could puzzle out the merits of
enlightened wisdom as hard fought products wrestled into possession by formal education;
contrasting with a more realistic collection of subtle raw experiences showing
that complaint was a poor substitute for effort. As each door of the unknown was thrust opened
I only found more darkness; it was up to me to screw up the courage to go into
it without permission or assurance that it was safe.
I had learned early on, and then again in
college philosophy, that all knowledge contained kernels of doubt; strip away
the lazily accepted handout assumptions and what remained was a
pool of questions that snared wandering minds as sure as the gravity of the
largest black hole; where experience conflicted with craftily cultivated expectations
there’d sure as shooting be dissonance.
What mattered became a paradox; then an oxymoron,
where a point of view defied vocabulary.
A place where words served the symbols of abstract concepts, those being
mere propositions formed by conjecture; both true and false. Words contained worlds of their own
interpretation as they were coupled with other like-kind words, resulting in a
train yard coupling defying the imagination as to designed intent or purpose;
where any position could be interpreted to mean the opposite: politicians had been playing that game for
years, but then no one took them seriously at their word anyway, so it was
forgiven and politely forgotten. The
trouble arrived when the rank and file of citizenry picked up the practice so then
no one could discern what to believe; the worst of it all was, who could be
trusted? Ultimately dissolving into a predictable reaction citing ‘it depends,’
and to be honest, trust always was a subjective exercise anyway. But we were
lured for so long into the false belief that ours was a shared value system
with agreed upon boundaries. Only in the
dire-straights of emergency was it noticeable that the thundering cacophony of
the crowd was crying the same lament: Who’s in charge here anyway?
Soon
enough, it became so damn painfully obvious. It was never a singular case of protest
about personal situation, but rather realizing discomfort
wasn’t anything that made me special anyway. Kind of like realizing the
discount coupon had expired.
After
that, what was there to say beyond apologizing for misconception?
My
mistake.
