#758: The Voice That Is Not My Voice Is My Voice

I was compelled to use the word
“voice” three times in the title of this
poem, and looking at the word
(everyone has had this experience)
it feels unfamiliar, unreal, made up.
That sound I make when I talk
is called a voice, and the personality
of my writing or my art is also called
sometimes a voice, but, too, the language
events inside my head, even when
they do not cross through the lips,
those, too, are voices, or, a voice, my
voice, which is not my voice, but is,
nevertheless, my voice. Sometimes,
though, that voice does cross
through the lips and words come
out of my mouth in conversation
with the other voice, the one I call
mine. In other words, I talk to myself.
I have read that some people do
not have any kind of inner voice.
While talking to oneself, as my mother
did, as I do, out loud sometimes, may
be seen as an eccentricity, I feel
terribly sad for people with no inner
voice. How lonely an existence that
must be, to walk around 24/7 in silence.
Not that there’s anything wrong
with silence. I try to get some of that
every day when I meditate because
I know it’s important. As I sit there,
focusing on the breath, my mind will
often wander, doing its planning or
remembering, and that other voice,
the one that is not mine but also mine,
interrupts and says, what are you
doing? You are planning, you are
remembering. Stop that. Focus on
the here and now, the sensations in
your body, the cool air from the open
window, the birds, the breath going
in and out. And I say, okay, okay, and
get back to it with a deep exhale.
Generally speaking, the voice that
is not my voice (but is nevertheless mine)
gives me good counsel, is rarely mean
or cruel, provides a gentle corrective
in sometimes dark places, is, in the end,
a kind of imaginary friend. How strange
the word still looks, having written it
so many times in this short poem.
And yet it bears repeating: the voice
that is not my voice is my voice.