“Too Much Is Exactly Enough”

Why do I change around certain people?
Sometimes the change is so quick we barely notice it. We become quieter. More agreeable. Less playful. We edit what we were going to say. We adjust ourselves to the room before we've even decided whether we want to.

There was a girl once, standing in the schoolyard with a carton of milk in her hand. She turned it around, pointed to the label, and recited the additives like a comic poet. Her friends laughed until they didn’t. In that moment, the playful became “too much,” and she learned that joy, unguarded, could cost her belonging. So she quietly folded into herself.

We carry these moments. Times we were loud, curious, too bright until we weren’t. We trade our authenticity for acceptance. Gabor Maté reminds us that this is not failure but survival. Children will always sacrifice authentic expression if it threatens attachment. What kept us safe then can suffocate us now if left unexamined.

Over time, we develop compartmentalized voices: the measured leader, the tender soul, the private singer. But leadership real leadership is not built from fragments. It’s born from wholeness.

Here, Ubuntu philosophy offers a guiding light. Mogobe Ramose, a prominent South African philosopher, draws from Ubuntu’s core: “I am because we are.” This is not just a phrase it’s an invitation to regain the unity of self through community and interconnection. In reclaiming our suppressed voices, we are not just healing ourselves we are restoring our shared humanity.

When our playful, soulful, authoritative selves converge, they don’t conflict they enrich. That’s leadership that nourishes from presence to presence.

For the expressive quiet leaders out there, the invitation is this: your “too much” moments aren’t mistakes. They’re the very things people remember the soul in the song, the laughter with meaning, the child shining through the grown-up.

So,the next time you notice yourself becoming different around somebody, don't immediately try to change it.

What changed in me when the situation changed?
Did I choose that?

Randolph