When My Voice Doesn't Match My Reflection!

     A few weeks ago, I sat at a table surrounded by familiar voices, each speaking with ease, confidence flowing like coffee being poured. I smiled, nodded, even laughed at the right places but inside, my words were pacing in circles. I wanted to speak, I had something to say… but I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not because I lacked the language but because I feared it wouldn’t land right.

    T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock is not just a poem to me, it’s a mirror. A voice that stumbles, hesitates, and questions, “Do I dare disturb the universe?” That single line echoes in those moments when I overthink a text before sending it, when I edit myself in conversations, when I tone down my enthusiasm because I worry it might seem “too much.”

    Prufrock’s paralysis isn’t weakness it’s the exhaustion of constantly performing in a world that rewards certainty. I’ve felt that tension in classrooms, conferences, even casual meetups. Once, in a department meeting, I wanted to share a new approach to teaching poetry, one I genuinely believed in. But the fear of judgment pressed hard against my chest, and so I stayed quiet. Someone else shared a similar idea later and I sat there applauding, silently punishing myself.

    In a world obsessed with clarity and confidence, being unsure feels like failure. But perhaps, in Prufrock’s hesitations, there is a strange kind of bravery a willingness to admit we are all, at times, uncertain, layered, unfinished.

    And maybe, just maybe, that’s where the real voice begins not with bold declarations, but with the quiet truth of our becoming.