Can one voice make a difference? YOU BET IT CAN!

While at times I'm sure we have all sat there thinking that something is wrong and we don't agree with it, we also sit there and think "what difference would it make if I said I didn't agree with it, I'm only one voice". This is a very natural feeling that we all have and unfortunately in 99% of the cases stops someone from standing up and speaking their mind.

I'm afraid to admit that I am probably one of those people more often than most of my friends/colleagues/acquaintences realise because if you ask them about me they will tell you that I am very vocal about what I believe and feel (and they are right to an extent) but what they don't realise is there are many many times where I just sit back and keep my mouth shut for fear of "what difference would it make if I did say anything, nothing is going to change" and I wait to hear if someone else feels the same way and then if they stand up and speak I get behind them and support them (safety in numbers you know).

The question I have to ask myself is what if everyone in the room felt the same way about something being wrong and they all thought "what difference would it make if I said I didn't agree with it, I'm only one voice" and so no one got up and spoke their mind? In that case even though the majority of the people in the room don't agree with a decision or a direction and they are entrusted to be a part of that, they end up doing exactly what none of them want to do because not one of them had the strength to stand up for what they believe in. And yet if only one of them had done spoken up then all of them would have agreed that this is the wrong thing to do and it wouldn't happen.

Recently, there have been some things happening in an organisation that I am involved in where I am not comfortable with the way things are being handled/done and yet while I have tried to approach certain individuals key to the decision making process in the organisation I have not publicly gotten up and stated my feelings about these topics in an open forum of that organisation. Why you might ask? Well for one, I do believe it is always better to go to a person one on one before bringing something public to see if there is information you can get or a resolution to an issue you have before making it public. However if that doesn't work you need to be prepared to speak your mind in a forum appropriate for that to happen. In this case there hasn't been an open forum that was available to address the specific issues I felt needed to be dealt with and I have already tried the direct one on one (or one on group) approach.

Having said that, something happened this past week that has made me realise that it is important at times to create a public forum when none exists in order that people can have their say and be heard. While it is not common there is precedence for major change to happen by these types of public outcries. I think in particular about the Philippines and the People Power marches that toppled governments, I think of Jesus going into the temple and turning over the tables of the loan sharks and merchants. In both these cases it was a statement of unhappiness over something that was being done that was wrong and an unwillingness to stand by and let it just happen.

In the past 3 days I have received numerous calls from individuals who have said "I am not happy about this or the way things are being handled" and they felt exactly the way I have been feeling about things and are basically saying the same thing. "There must be something we can do about this, what do we do?" they ask and I have had to respond that I truly believe we need our voices to be heard and we need to hear "all sides" of the story because right now we don't have enough information in order to make a proper judgement on what we truly feel about things, only a somewhat informed feeling that requires us to deal with it in a frustrated uninformed manner.

Honestly, if it weren't for all of those calls I would probably have let the situations that brought me to a feeling of discontent to linger on and eventually cause me to evaluate whether or not I wanted to continue to be a part of that kind of organisation. However because of these "single voice" calls I have discovered that I am not alone and that many many others are seeking the same answers to the same questions as I am and because of that each of their single voices, making a phone call to me makes me realise that one voice can make a difference. How many others have already made their evaluaion, decided their voice won't make a difference and have just left. I'm sure many of them.

So where does one go from here. Well in my case it is to work with some of these people together so they can share with each other what they are feeling and allow us to put together a plan of action that results in us getting the answers we seek to the concerns we have. If we can't get those who should do it to create an appropriate public forum than we may have to be the creators of that forum. We may discover through this process that things aren't what we thought they were and with the right information in hand may feel better about what is transpiring. However we might find out that by stepping out with our "one voice" that a lot more people are feeling the same way and in fact upon getting the necessary information will have the responsibility to call for change and "fix" the problem we perceive to be there. In either case we end up with a conclusion to an issue that is causing many people to be concerned and/or upset.

So I guess what I'm saying is, don't be afraid to stand up for what you believe in, or question what you think is wrong. Speak your mind, because you may just be that one voice that causes everyone else who was too afraid to say anything because "what will my one voice do" to stand up and say "we agree" and instead of a bunch of frustrated individuals all feeling bad, you end up with a united group of people who make the right decision for the common good.

So can one voice make a difference? YOU BET IT CAN!