It’s amazing how many life changing speeches go unheard. Or how many prolific dissertations have gone unpublished. Or how many sheets of paper were wasted on unfinished marriage vows. Why? Because they were simply drafts, preliminary versions of a piece of writing. The beginning stages of genius to be revisited or the sparing of unfruitful and unsuccessful literary work. Regardless of their type of draft, they are never given chance to become what they could have been.
Translation: drafts are the pieces of our life we never take ownership of, place on a shelf and leave in a folder never to reopen. Drafts are those deferred dreams left to die because life started moving too fast. Or those moments where you say this is not good enough so I’ll let it sit and come back to it later. Why? Because we don’t trust the power of our thoughts at the time of their inception. We second guess their relevance and question their credibility. We teeter because we don’t trust the power of our voice. Most times doubt is to blame. But I believe it goes much deeper. I will borrow the words of Marrianne Williiamson who wrote “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.” We ask ourselves daily questions that diminish our inner light and innate strength. The saying, our words become us, has never been more real. We shape our future everyday with the things that leave our mouth. However, It is the words left unsaid or unwritten that will ultimately define our legacy because we leave behind a fragmented identity that was shattered by fear. We cower to fear and silence our destiny. Sometimes what we should have said was who we were supposed to become.
Drafts. These indefinite documents become temporary adages of what should have been. Left in an undocumented limbo of possibility, potential, and change, to later appear in the arms of regret.
Avoidance of a problem doesn’t make it go away but rather allows it to fester and grow beyond repair. The remedy? Click publish and share. What you have to say matters because if you don’t someone else will and chances are they won’t publish it quite like you. Drafts are necessary to organize and collect your thoughts but its not until you revise, review, and reflect will publishing make sense. But if it’s not worth publishing, then simply hit discard, for that serves a greater end than spending an eternity as an unfulfilled draft.
Martina Kristian