Sarasvati is the Goddess of Creative expression. She’s the power behind all artistry. When we are able to find the right words, or move someone with the truth of our words or song they say “Sarasvati is dancing on your tongue”.
Right now, as we enter the final part of Navaratri it’s a special time to call forth and celebrate Sarasvati, Goddess of Language, Music, Writing, The Arts.
One of the things that has held me back in the past from expressing myself and sharing more of my thoughts, writing et al, is the concern “What if I’m wrong?”
I have, from time to time, refrained from speaking my truth in the moment out of fear that I might somehow be mistaken… It’s like, I hold myself back in anticipation of being embarrassed when inevitably some important detail that I had overlooked comes to light.
But what if, we allowed ourselves to change our mind? What if we didn’t have to get it all right? What if, I didn’t have a problem with someone disagreeing with me and could easily say “Oh, that makes sense, I hadn’t thought of it that way”, or, even just “thank you for that - illuminating!” without a care in the world?
What is that part of us that is so concerned about ‘getting it right’ or ‘being right’ anyway?
It’s our dear friend the ego, isn’t it? It’s the part of us that wants to protect us and worries that we’ll be at risk if we get it wrong. That we might be ostracised from the safety of our community. And indeed, that is a risk… Sometimes when you express your truth, others don’t like it. Making an error might lose you some esteem. Or offering an unpopular opinion might cost you some friendships.
But what’s the cost of keeping quiet? Then the only friendships you’ll have are with those who don’t really know you that well. They’ll only know the parts of you that you feel confident that they’ll approve of. That would be a bummer, wouldn’t it? And what about the cost of never being brave with your voice? What about all the people that might have resonated with what you have to say? They’ll miss out on you too.
I have a dear friend, Acacia, who I was talking to about this. Acacia always encourages me to express what’s in my heart and she gave me the best analogy to help me understand my concerns in a different way.
I told her that I was feeling worried that I’ll put something out there and then later, I might learn something else and feel silly about what I said before.
She told me to imagine if a band only ever put out one album out of concern that their fans might not like their new stuff? Imagine if they didn’t allow themselves to grow and evolve and instead just put out music that they thought their fans would like, based on their first album.
That really got me!
I remembered another friend of mine, who is a sculptor artist who does big public works in places like New York City, who told me that the sure fire way to kill a creative project is to worry about what others will think of it. She said that the moment you start to think about whether or not those that commissioned it will approve, or the public will like it, all the creative juice kind of dries up.
I realised that what I was really doing was holding myself back and kind of waiting till I had ‘perfect understanding’ before I would share… And the reason I was doing that was out of concern for how others might evaluate my words and judge me.
What if instead of trying to know something before I speak, I could just say, with humility, ‘this feels true to me right now’… Not trying to come from a place of having it all figured out but rather, just in process… How might that allow me to express myself more freely?