Live Out Loud

I've been thinking about my daily reading for August 12th, titled "To Live Out Loud".  I liked the phrase as soon as I read it.  It just sounds healthy and free and right.  But then, I read the entry and what at first seemed a simple, joyous concept became much more complex and more difficult.  Think about it.  What does it mean to live out loud?

Why do children laugh and cry with abandon?  They don't think about how others will react.  They just feel and express that in the moment through sound or word or action.  Adults, on the other hand, self censor.  Expressing what you feel, whether it be joy, disgust, sorrow, or contentment, makes you stand out, draw attention.  Most of us are uncomfortable with that.  So we either keep our thoughts and feelings to ourselves or we compose our expression of them to fit the audience and our own need to fit in or worse, to be invisible.  Thus, we dilute both and become disingenuous.  The more we confine our real selves, the more we modify ourselves to blend, the less we know ourselves.  We lose touch with our soul and become less real.  I can't remember the last time I cried or laughed freely.  I mean really freely, with abandon.  My first thought is that I can't imagine the vulnerability I would experience were I to do so.  But now I find myself hoping for a time when I can do both because now I can't imagine how empowered and invulnerable I would be.

Living out loud, I think, is allowing ourselves to not only feel but to express what we feel by word, by laughter, by sighs, by action, by whatever is real in its generation and expression.  Living out loud is to be real to yourself and to others without regard for what others think.  It's clear to me now that living out loud would be a gift to both myself and to those around me.  What do you think?