being quiet in a world that's loud

the constant pressure of being “on” all the time

I often find myself longing for childhood, for the years before I became so aware of myself.

Back then, I would walk into rooms thinking I belonged. I never questioned my worth or doubted what I brought to the table. I spoke confidently when I had ideas I wanted to share and unfiltered thoughts I wanted to pass on to others.

I didn’t spend hours ruminating in my mind, mentally rehearsing a sentence before speaking it. I didn’t filter and edit myself down until my thoughts were barely recognisable, barely mine.

I can’t quite pinpoint the exact moment I stopped being that version of myself. A shift from loud to quiet.

Maybe it wasn’t a moment at all. Maybe it was an accumulation over time, a slow regression into my shell. With every “you’re so loud!” comment and awkward silence after saying the wrong thing.

At some point, I stopped saying the answer as soon as it came to me and started questioning whether it was right first. Whether it was worth saying. Whether anyone would even care at all.

Until eventually, I stopped saying it altogether. Even when I knew the answer. Even when I knew what I wanted to say. I stopped speaking up in group conversations about an opinion I had about a topic, stopped speaking unless spoken to.

Somewhere along the way, I learned to trust everyone else’s voice more than my own. I let my own thoughts become more filtered with the opinions of others.

This version of me followed me through school, university, and eventually into adulthood. I became known as the ‘quiet one’, the ‘polite one’, the one who was ‘well behaved’ and ‘mild mannered’.

But I wasn’t any of these things, not really - not in my mind, not in front of the people I loved, in front of those who mattered.

In my head, I wasn’t quiet at all. My mind was loud - it was constantly thinking and observing and analysing and questioning.

But over time I adapted to the label others gave me. I became smaller, more filtered.

I became quiet in a world that seemed to reward loudness.

No one really talks about how difficult it is to exist in a world that demands constant visibility. A world that rewards those who speak first, who think out loud, who know how to command attention.

Loud people rarely get told that they’re loud, but quiet people are constantly reminded that they’re quiet.

It feels like an embarrassingly large name tag, like shouting into the void “Hi my name is Kav and I’m the quiet one”.

And by default, a list of assumptions get attached to that label:

Quiet means boring.

Quiet means shy.

Quiet means lacking in confidence.

Quiet means someone you can overlook.

In the corporate world, visibility is often mistaken for value. The hardest workers aren’t the ones who are promoted. The most visible are. The ones who speak up, who are good at small talk, who know the right people.

For a while I tried to morph into one of those people. I’d say things for the sake of saying them, contribute to a conversation I had no interest in.

But it never felt like me, and I’d walk out of those conversations feeling strangely hollow.

I wasn’t finding my own voice - I was mimicking and borrowing everyone else’s

It took me a long time to realise I wasn’t uncomfortable because I was quiet - I was uncomfortable because I’d convinced myself quiet meant less. That it was something to overcome.

Since when did we decide that quietness was something to outgrow?

Somewhere along the way, the world started treating loudness as confidence, visibility as competence, and silence as something that needed to be fixed.

And somewhere between years of therapy, countless conversations with myself, and learning to understand how I move through and show up in the world, I realised that I wasn’t just quiet; I was observant. I was grounded. I was a good listener.

I may not be the loudest person in the room, and that’s okay. I listened more than I spoke, not because I had nothing to say, but because I genuinely wanted to understand.

When I do speak, my words carry intention.

For years, I thought I needed to become louder to be taken seriously. I thought confidence looked like always having something to say, filling every silence, being the biggest personality in the room.

Confidence looks a little different for me now.

It’s sitting comfortably in silence without feeling the need to fill it. It’s trusting that my thoughts have value before anyone else validates them. It’s knowing that my worth isn’t determined by how much space I occupy, but by the substance I bring when I do.

Once I stopped apologising for being quiet, from shying away from who I really was, it was only then that I realised that quietness was never a weakness. It was my own relationship with myself that needed to be fixed all along.

And while the world will probably always reward the loudest voices, the most memorable ones to me aren’t always the loudest. They are the ones who listen, who make me feel seen and heard. Who notice and speak with intention.

And so now, quietness is something I’m learning to grow into.