Can I add to this?

I used to have this bad habit of writing out a comment online, deciding it wasn't actually very good, and then just deleting it. Apparently this is a fairly common phenomenon; Facebook calls it self-censorship and found 71% of people sometimes deleted posts before publishing them. Of course, eventually I optimised that whole process away and just didn't bother commenting at all. I doubt even Facebook can capture data on how many people think about writing something and don't.

Lately, though, I've been using an idea I developed earlier, a reverse mantra. A reverse mantra is a question you get in the habit of asking yourself at regular intervals or in specific situations. I wanted one to help me decide what when it's worth saying something and when it's not. I settled on the following: "can I add to this?"

It's too easy to think that what you have to say has to be profoundly important and meaningful to be worth saying. But, really, it can be very small. If you think "oh, I know something about that", "I have a relevant experience", "I can say something that might be helpful or kind", or "I can offer help", that's plenty. Maybe what you say won't add much, but if it adds anything at all it's still a net positive to do it.

I've heard it said that perfect is the enemy of good, and I think that's the intution that should apply here. You don't need to be Rembrandt to paint, and you don't need to be Oscar Wilde to contribute something to a conversation. Your average experience or opinion can still be valuable to someone, can still be adding to the collective information on the internet. And, well, if nobody finds it useful, they can just not read it.