Losing Your Voice

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(Run time – 2:25)

My family moved to Idaho when I was three. Actually, the point was just to move west to find cleaner air. My father was a preacher, and we drove west until we found a preaching job. We did – we rented a house – we unpacked the U-Haul – and got some bad news. It turns out that “preaching job” was an unpaid teacher for a Sunday school class. With no other options, my father got out of the ministry, and traded “selling God” for “selling cars.”

After a few months, there were more people sitting in a cramped room for my father’s class than there were in the minister’s auditorium session. A jealous man, the minister conspired with some of the church leadership, and we were ‘invited’ to leave. Not long afterward, that preacher inexplicably lost his voice. Permanently. I don’t know and I don’t care what you think about spirituality – but there is a certain sense of divine justice in that story.

Our Hidden Achilles Heel

It occurs to me now that I have no idea what that man ended up doing to provide for his family. And it also occurs to me that for a very long time I was just as vulnerable – my entire future bound by two little vibrating strings in one of the most fragile parts of the human body.

I feel better about it now, because my career is not entirely dependent upon my ability to talk. Sure, talking makes communication easier, but I’m no longer shut out if I can’t speak. For me, the issue wasn’t just the physical nature of making sounds with my throat – it was what I said and how I said it. I have a gift, in that I can be very persuasive. Maybe for too long, I was too willing to slide by knowing I could talk my way past difficult situations. I knew I could get by with less preparation time than others. Without my voice – I would have been crippled.

Now I have a wider skillset and a variety of ways I could put food on the table if I wasn’t able to talk. It would be harder, but not the impossibility it once was. I hope to carry this process of self-reflection further, by trying to see what other skills and abilities I might be over-relying upon.

Spreading Your Risk

There’s an old saying: “For the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” Well, I’d like to think that my verbal skills were a nice Swiss-Army knife that got me past a number of challenges, but maybe some of those would have been easier if I’d have been more willing to acquire some specialized tools along the way. Unlike a toolbox, we’re not limited to the number of items we can carry – only limited by the time we choose to invest in earning those tools.

Which tool or tools have been your crutch? And what is your Plan B if that crutch goes away?

[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, philosophy, introspection, self-analysis, self-help, communication, religion[/tags]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download