I was about five years old and I ended up in a painting circle, I don't know how, with other kids older than me. It was our first time going there, the others were already familiar with the place. They kept bragging in the school hallways where they kept exhibiting drawings that were awarded in this circle. I was clapping with impatience, all ready, with brushes, drawing pad, gouaches, of which I was terribly proud, all placed on colors from the lightest to the darkest. I thought nothing stood in my way. We all sat around a large table on the first floor of the Pioneer House, as it was then, and waited. Long brushes, a large drawing sheet and a glass rectangle, like a mirror, were already arranged in front of us. I looked at her for a long time. Then around. Everyone was calm. My eyes slowly widened. I wanted to ask someone something, but shame beat fear. I was silent. A little after 10 o'clock, the drawing teacher enters, she smiles at us while I sit in my chair. And say: Good, today I'm going to ask you to paint an icon on glass. And he leaves, he says he'll be back in half an hour. O ic... o icoa... Tears gather in my throat and I struggle not to cry. I can barely keep them in. I get up and go out. Only when I'm sure no one is around do I let them do what they do best, clean up the mess.
This story I met again twenty years later and better, when this time I took it out of the closet and told it on a stage in a speech about courage. Of course, back then, I could say: no, I don't know how to paint on glass. After all, what could you ask of a five-year-old? To probably paint snowmen, not even glass, let alone icons. Since then I choose to re-encounter deeply with this story, completely mine, as a lesson that reminds me that we are no other than those we accept in ourselves with honesty.
But what does this have to do with public speaking? It has. They say the biggest saboteur of public speaking, no matter how many people are listening, is obviously fear. But it sounds too simplistic, doesn't it? The fear fueled by feelings of shame, the fear of being rejected, of not proving as much as is expected of you, of being irrelevant, of stuttering, of not being able to say your message exactly in the form that you do you want it etc. there are just as many blockages that kill before any chance for us to voice our opinions or thoughts is born. We put ourselves in the way, not someone else.
Later I chose to turn the story upside down, more precisely in my favor, the story with the drawing or so many others from the same closet, which then served me to bring on stage, literally, the fragility I once found myself in. And let it become a story in which others have also seen themselves. We can speak schematically about public speaking, we know. How to master the art of public speaking in x steps or the x secrets about public speaking that will guarantee your success, etc. Of all the ingredients and strategies hyped over time about the art of public speaking, I think the bet is that of naturalness. This is where things get complicated.
When we talk about natural in public speaking, we are moving away from a composition, i.e. a construction, which by its nature is artificial. I am not saying that we should not rely on techniques necessary in the art of discourse - rhetoric, rhythm, voice, narrative thread, discursive flow, etc. – but I think they come naturally from our own authenticity on stage. Where does she come from? I'd say it's simple. What is authentic, is. And that's it. But like anything that seems simple, it isn't. It requires a different kind of self-negotiation – a form of deep understanding, alignment or attunement with who we are, fully assuming ourselves to then feel comfortable showing ourselves to others – in our case here on stage. Brené Brown talks about the courage to be vulnerable[i] by carrying our own shadows, no longer living under the ax of error or judgment or a debilitating perfectionism. Of course, after a deep exercise, not like a jump into nothingness.
What seems essential to me, before this relationship of good peace with vulnerability, is first honesty. The more honest we are about ourselves, about who we are, the more an openness that can reveal us and perhaps more fragile fragments of us, show us naturally. And we will be equally received by those who listen to us. Why? Because people are seen themselves in such someone else's story, whether they admit it or not. Or, if there is something that wins someone's attention (actually heart) while telling a story, it is precisely this recognition of one's own person in the other, to no longer be alone, to belong to a group that sees, feels the same. To shorten the distance, in short. What disalienates.
We are talking, yes, about a bringing together in public speaking. But on several levels. The first is about magnetizing the audience through the story. If we clothe whatever subject we have to convey in the story, we tear the audience out of their time take during our story. It becomes captive for a few minutes of our time, it is part of the sequence of events by which we carry it through the story we tell. The second is about authenticity because we are speaking from the inside of the experience, of the story we are telling. Whether it's a personal story, like the one with the drawing I brought at the beginning of these lines, or it's a story heard from someone else, the fact of conveying that experience further through the story brings the audience closer to reality narrated. So it makes it believable and people can resonate with the story more easily. Figures, data, facts remain outside of them. Important, of course, but dry, without the power to impress. They say that people may not remember what you talked about, but they will definitely remember the emotion that is left behind. And finally, the third level is related to a meaning, a meaning you give to the message, the speech. Each of us needs to understand the purpose of the things we do or participate in. And the story contains these cardinal axes, from which people cut out the meanings they are looking for.
In recent years, perhaps nothing is more fragile than the truth. Pulled in all directions, twisted, camouflaged, perverted, etc. throughout this elastic web of the post-modern era. But if we were to remain loyal to a compass of our own, perhaps the orientation towards the honest north of our own values, which guides the way we express ourselves and outwardly, in any speech, regardless of how many people are listening to us, starting with one and even to full rooms, it is the most stable.
[i] Brené Brown, 2102, The courage to be vulnerable. Change the way you live, love, educate and lead, trans. L. Dascălu and C. Rusu, Bucharest: Ed. Curtea Veche.
written by Andra Samson