A note from Dr. Hendrix
This piece traces the three voices I have listened to across my life — first everyone else’s, then, at thirty-seven, an inner voice that led me into the risks that made me. It is about finally trusting my own rational mind. I wrote it because learning whose voice to follow is, in the end, most of the work of growing up.
As far as I can determine, I have listened to three distinct voices throughout my life.
The first was others’ voices: my mother’s voice, my teachers’ voices, my peers’ voices, ecclesiastical leaders’ voices. In other words, I was attached to the outside voices of others.
At age 37, I began to hear an inner voice. It guided me through major risks I began to take. The voices of others fell off the table. The only voice that mattered was the inner voice or my second voice.
At somewhere around age 53 (maybe as late as 55), rational thinking took center stage. Outside voices were important, but little more than considered opinions. My inner voice guided me as I walked that tightrope between two cliffs. And then one day, my rational thinking seemed to come roaring in. I can remember the day I made the following promise to myself: square pegs in square holes; no more square pegs in round holes.
I think my rational mind is my fully integrated brain: taking all that I have heard from others’ voices, contrasting that with all that I have heard from my inner voice, and integrating the two into my rational mind. For me it is a life worked at.