Authored by Sydney Little

Atlanta is a city where residents seek to separate themselves from the rest of the state. As a college student in Atlanta whose hometown is just a short drive away from the city, there are many aspects of living here that provide a small culture shock. The most relevant and prominent difference: mask mandates. While at home, I am one of the only people out and about wearing a mask. My hometown does not have mask mandates, and citizens often voice their displeasure about both masks and vaccines. At college, students are required to wear medical-grade masks, and the Atlanta streets are often packed with similarly protected people. I often find myself ensnared between two different worlds, with my home community passing judgment on the way that my college peers and myself choose to wear masks and get vaccinated. 

When I’m home for the holidays, I work at a pizza restaurant, often getting myself into conversations with customers from all different backgrounds. This presents a challenge that all customer service employees know entirely too well—a customer discussing politics with which you disagree. I tend to consider myself to be an outspoken person, someone who will hold true to her beliefs and defend them. However, the need to maintain polite conversation holds me back. When your tip depends on your ability to smile and nod along, you do it. When customers complain about mask mandates and how they see vaccines as tools of government control, it takes everything within me to not respond with my personal support for the subjects of their complaints. Instead, I force myself to remain neutral, never explicitly stating my opinion one way or another. Within these situations, it is easier to let them complain.

This scenario unfortunately describes much of my interactions with people on the opposite side of the aisle when it comes to COVID-19 precautions. More recently, I worked as a student caller on campus, a job that required me to contact alumni to raise money for the school. While most conversations were enjoyable or quick and painless, I did have one phone call that became thirty minutes of me listening to a woman complain about COVID-19 precautions and insulting my college for our regulations. Shocked, I sat quietly, hardly able to get a word in before she spoke over me. Even if I was able to speak, what would I say? There was no way to disagree with her without starting an argument, a scenario that I desperately wanted to avoid. Ultimately, I found a way to wrap the conversation up, telling her that I had to get off the phone. Once the conversation was finished, I told the story to my coworkers, many of whom said that they would have gotten into a dispute with the woman. Their comments left me wondering: Why do I allow myself to be held back instead of advocating for my beliefs on this topic?

Fear has a funny way of holding us back, even in times when our voices are most essential.

Civil conversation is difficult in circumstances such as these. Whether I am avoiding a full-scale debate while on the clock or listening to students from my high school talk about how masks are useless, my urge to spark a conversation is often restrained by my non-confrontational tendencies. Perhaps it is because too many of my debates have ended with both parties getting too emotional to continue the conversation, each person’s point lost in translation. Perhaps it is a pessimistic mindset, the idea that nothing I have to say will prove effective in changing the other’s mind. No matter the reason, I cannot help but feel as though I should be doing more.

The question of my own impact haunts my mind. As I listen to these people with whom I so strongly disagree, I catch myself wondering what I can accomplish by speaking up. Can my words change a person’s mind, or am I simply another figure floating in the sea of disagreement? Before I speak, I know that I must sort out my intentions first. 

Even when I know my goals, I still allow my voice to be stifled by my own fears of disagreement. I am certain that this experience is not unique in this day and age where respectful disagreement is rapidly becoming a lost art. One cannot help but wonder how we have gotten to such a point, where every aspect of our lives is so highly politicized that a mere conversation about health and safety precautions can be spun into a passionate argument. It is this experience, the memory of past disagreements, that mutes my voice. Fear has a funny way of holding us back, even in times when our voices are most essential.

Perhaps, however, my writing can serve as this voice. I have always been a writer. It is the medium that I find myself most drawn to—the one where I can fully express my thoughts without facing the backlash head-on, being interrupted before I can explain myself, or getting into an argument. Increasingly, I find myself drafting poems relating to current events or sharing my thoughts with my friends on social media. In these constantly changing times where disputes arise on a regular basis, I believe that it is crucial to find the most effective way of communicating our thoughts. My passion for writing presents that method for me. The written word, I have found, makes up for the limitations of speech while also simply providing an outlet for my musings and emotions. 

It is my greatest hope that everyone can discover the best outlet for their voices. I resolve to deny that inner desire to stay silent. Without a diverse array of voices, our world will always be limited, denied essential stories that could easily be the beginning of changed minds. As I continue on the path of the written word, I hope that each word renews my confidence and spurs me toward the greater challenge of speaking my mind aloud.