Do I dare to expose myself for something I believe in?

Writing down your thoughts can be really powerful. It helps slowing them down, structuring them; look at them from another perspective. It really is a waste of time turning around and around the same thoughts in your head again, again and again.

I am in situation right now, where I cannot decide what to do. My heart says do it, but my logical, rational, safe player’s head is definitely against it. Yes. No. Yes. No ... The dilemma is in my head throughout the day – it wakes me in the morning, accompanies me through the day, it keeps me awake at night. To stop this vicious circle I decided to start writing about it and see if this can take me to the decision. Just write...

I work for a company that was doing quite good despite the recession. There were ups and downs, some decisions I did not like over the years, but overall, it was ok. We are quite young collective, the positive energy and enthusiasm were our brand mark we were proud of. We were family oriented, tried to find the ways to help the community, nature.

We got a new CMO with ambitious goals to achieve two months ago and things started to change very fast. Suddenly we became numbers that need to produce numbers. Just do it, don't ask how. Family is not important, business 24/7, how people feel is not important. The numbers are everything.

People started to feel incompetent, scared and frustrated. In all this one man stood up and publicly expressed what we were all silently thinking about and started an action to establish trade union in our company. He connected with other independent unions. This was huge.

First reaction from majority was YES! That's it. We need to step together, the power is in masses. But then doubt and fear stroked. If I join, will they fire me? Not directly of course, but will they find something ... I have a family, a mortgage...

Do I dare to expose myself for something I believe it is the right thing to do?

I keep asking myself, how will I feel after all this is behind me one way or another knowing, I did duck, play safe, did not gather the courage to stand for one of my core beliefs:

Every human deserves to be treated respectfully and no power in the world should give a person the right to violate basic personal rights of another human being.

Our ancestors fought for these rights, why are we so scared to use them?

They say that life is not fair. Should this be an excuse for our own actions?

I hope not. It should be on us to help to make the world a better place. To make it fairer.

With all this said I feel I would be the biggest hypocrite, if I would not support this person in pursuit for fairness. But this realization does not make my decision any easier. They say select your battles carefully. Has this »battle« a chance to be won? Is this question even important?

What do you think? You are not directly involved; you are not emotional about it. I would be really, really happy to hear your thoughts on this matter in comments below.