Once was enough to push my boundaries
ISTUMBLED upon a compelling new (to me) word recently: Eunoia. Of Ancient Greek origin, the word has various meanings, but within the discipline of rhetoric, eunoia means: the goodwill and trust a speaker cultivates between themself and their audience; a condition of receptivity.
I’m horribly uncomfortable with public speaking. Sometimes in a group (say, at choir practice), I can play the class clown, but cracking jokes from the cheap seats is an entirely different animal from standing up in front of other humans in an official capacity, summoning up the courage to open my mouth and utter words, and expecting those people to listen…and deem me competent. It’s such a frightening prospect that for all of my life I’ve avoided it like fire ants!
Until a couple of years ago, when I heard myself volunteering to give a talk at my church. I was attending a Men’s Breakfast Group meeting (still called that although women are now welcome as well), where various members provide monthly talks on their choice of topics while the rest of us enjoy a typical southern American breakfast of eggs, sausage or bacon, corn grits, fruit, OJ, and a buttermilk biscuit (which is a type of homemade roll, not a cookie), and coffee, of course, all for a $5 donation, plus a little edification thrown in for free.
Why did I suggest something so far out of my comfort zone? It was an impulse, springing from my deep fascination with a book I’d just acquired about the “fine art of conversation.” In that moment I fancied that I’d like to take a turn at the podium myself, to share this “vital” subject matter with the group.
My announcement was met with murmurs and facial expressions indicating interest, and I drove away from the church feeling lighter than air, fully alive!
How effortless it was to glibly promise that I would do this thing in a month’s time!
It was only after I’d arrived home that the reality of what I’d proposed doing sank in. Walking upstairs, I suddenly felt breathless with fear, and my knees gave way. I took to my bed and stayed there for about 18 hours, undergoing what I think of as “sleep therapy.”
Why am I so frightened of public speaking? Probably because I don’t always think quickly on my feet. (I KNOW the Jeopardy questions; I just can’t come up with them quickly enough to compete. Particularly in that bizarre backwards format the show requires. But I digress).
It’s not just “answers” that can elude me; sometimes the simplest phrases, or even basic words flee my brain just as they’re called upon, and I’m left wordless for long moments, looking and feeling like an utter fool. So avoiding public speaking is a matter of dodging humiliation. I wouldn’t be caught dead on live radio!
After my sleep therapy, I felt better, and called my oldest sister Lucia Claire for pointers, as she had, over the course of her adult life, grown quite comfortable with public speaking, even appearing with regularity on the radio to plug her various service projects. She was clearly tickled to oblige.
The strong gist of her imparted wisdom made me wonder; did Lucia consider me long-winded and full of myself? Because her primary twofold message was firm and unequivocal: BE SELF-DEPRECATING. (That’s how she was herself, in public speaking and in life, self-deprecating almost to a fault). And, KEEP IT SHORT. (For Lucia, an excellent church sermon was invariably a brief one).
She suggested that I delineate for my audience in advance how many points I’d be making during my talk, so they could keep count and know I wasn’t going to just blab on forever.
Lucia said I should start my talk with two jokes, the first one about myself, and at my own expense. “That’s to make them like you,” she said. The second joke should refer to the topic of my talk.
She warned, “Do NOT act like you’re the big expert. If you do that, someone will invariably shoot you down.”
After staying up all night before the talk trying to form my copious and chaotic notes into some sort of order, when morning arrived (far too soon!) I was operating on nothing but caffeine, Adderall, and adrenaline.
I stood before my fellow church members, heart pounding, and told a joke - something about the pink, gray and black striped animal from whom I’d acquired my (faux) fur vest, at a deep discount. People laughed! Then I told my topic-related joke (culled from the New Yorker), and they laughed again!
But before I proceeded to dive into my ill-prepared talk on the history of the art of conversation, going all the way back to antiquity, I self-deprecated like it was going out of style.
I told them it was the first talk I’d ever given, and asked for their forbearance. I admitted to having stayed up all night long to prepare, and not finishing. I said up front, “I am NOT the resident expert on this topic.
But if you have any questions that I can’t answer, I will be happy to research them and find the answers for you! (That spiel was verbatim from my sister’s advice.
If it’s possible, I think I was even more self-deprecating than she had deemed necessary).
I wasn’t forgetting words that morning (thank you, God!), but there were still long pauses as I shuffled through my mess of hand-written note cards, letting each one drop to the floor once I’d waded through its information (or decided to skip it).
But my audience was clearly listening, and had chosen to stay with me despite my halting delivery, and my switching forth and back between reading my notecards and longer passages in the book.
But my topic was of such interest to this particular audience that the subject matter was doing its own work, creating a sort of magic in the sunny room.
I’d been unable to narrow the topic down to numbered bullet points as my sister had advised, but the group was engaged anyhow.
It ended up being a long talk after all, but the listeners remained responsive, and they were laughing not at me, but with me!
As my speech progressed, the group - physicians, theologians, musicians, a painter, educators, business people – conferred on me the mantles of respect and expert status simply because I stood before them speaking with the merest modicum of authority, but on a subject that had clearly captured their imaginations much as it had mine.
They asked me all manner of questions, vulnerably revealing their insecurities regarding the subject of conversation.
Case in point: my then-choir director (also a world class organist), who honestly had never even seemed to LIKE me in choir (probably due to those class clown tendencies I mentioned, plus my tendency to arrive late to practices, but also just because he was a bit of a jerk), waited in line after my talk to ask me how he could converse more successfully at parties, and what he should do vis a vis communication problems in his relationship with his wife!
What was this alchemy that had changed me from a person many of them had probably never even noticed before, to a person upon whose every word they’d been hanging? When they’d kept laughing at my impromptu jokes, I felt the euphoria of a stand-up comedienne having an “on” night in front of a good crowd.
No WONDER some people love public speaking, I thought when it was all over…it’s INTOXICATING!
Evidently, I’d been graced with eunoia - I’ve kept the raft of positive emails and handwritten notes I received after the fact as proof that it really did happen as I remember it. Yet I’ve never given another talk since, and I never will.
The anticipatory stress of giving just the one probably shaved a year off my life!
And I’m simply too immethodical to be an effective speaker under normal, less-charitable circumstances.
But the satisfaction from that solitary triumph will inform my confidence level until the hour I die, another reason I will leave well enough alone.
Because deep in my heart, I know that talk I gave was a one-off, albeit one that I shall relish forever. It was an experience born of undeserved grace. If I were to ever try doing it again, I know I’d bomb.
I’ve kept the raft of positive emails and notes I received after the fact as proof that it really did happen.