Small Silences Can Cost The Most

Many of the moments that cost us something are not dramatic.

No confrontation, no crisis. Just a room, something that was not right, and the choice to let it pass. 

I have been in that room. It was an end-of-year party, where a a comment was made about a colleague that should not have been. I was close enough to say something, but didn't. 

I have thought about that moment many times since. It was an entirely ordinary moment. That is exactly why it stays with me, and why most people reading this will have a version of it. 

Perhaps it was a meeting where something was said that you let slide. The colleague whose situation you could see clearly and whose door you did not knock on. The email you drafted and did not send. 

What those moments share: a value was present, and the choice was to make it invisible.

This is where I want to push back on how we usually talk about self-advocacy. It is not only about making your achievements visible. It is about making your convictions visible. 

And silence, even when it feels like the path of least disruption, has a cost. The energy does not disappear. It goes into the replay of the moment, the quiet frustration without a name, the version of the conversation you keep rehearsing long after everyone else has forgotten the room. 

Silence does not protect you from the cost. It defers it. 

https://substack.com/@charmianlong 

What is one thing you have stayed silent about, not because you did not know what you thought, but because saying it felt like too much?