As I prepare to leave, in a few hours, for the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking in Orlando, Florida, I am struck by both the enormity of the challenge before me and the incredible opportunity it represents.
I’ve been there before, competing two years ago, in Palm Desert, California. I know the level of competition I will be facing. Of the 270,000 Toastmasters in the world, only 81 remain in contention for the title. Each is a champion already.
I have already put in hundreds of hours of thinking, writing, practicing and rewriting in preparation for my seven minutes on stage, and I’m sure the other competitors have all been working just as hard as I have. You would think I would have every aspect of my speech locked down at this late stage of the game, but I find that I am still learning.
The sheer variety of responses I have received in the feedback from my practice audiences continues to amaze me. For as much as I would like to think that I am in control of the experience I am presenting through my speech, the reality is that every member in the audience interprets what I say through their own set of filters, experiences and biases. I have no more control over that than I have over the weather.
Much as a thunderstorm can spoil a picnic or nourish a parched cornfield, that variety of response can be a bane or a blessing. I can’t control precisely what someone will make of my words.
All I can do is provide them with a rich and evocative experience. That is within my control.
Under the guidance of two excellent coaches, Rich Hopkins and Drian Von Golden, I am learning subtleties of structure and voice that can make my message more accessible and powerful and discovering how to speak from the audience’s perspective, rather than my own.
I’m learning about aspects of movement and gesture that can add emphasis to the words I say, ways to use expression and reaction to reinforce or undercut the meaning of my words and subtleties of vocal rhythm and emphasis that can crystalize my literal meaning or insinuate the unsaid.
Every time I achieve some level of competency, a new aspect of my incompetence reveals itself. I could spend another month studying, editing, practicing and polishing, but I still wouldn’t be perfect.
But ready or not, it’s time to go.
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While a summer thunderstorm can interrupt a picnic, it can also create fond, shared memories more valuable than the picnic would have if it had not been interrupted. “Spoiled” maybe, but that, too, depends on what someone makes of it.
Your acceptance of the unattainability of perfection is valuable. Don’t people often value imperfections, like the interrupted picnic, more than they realize. People who can’t are probably making themselves miserable. The imperfections make one example stand out from all the others that are closer to being perfect. (That might explain much of the appeal of Bob Dylan’s early performances, or Lyle Lovett’s celebrity. “How can someone who looks like that make such music?”) The most perfect performance may still win a title, but 20 years from now which will be worth more? At the level you are competing, the obvious answer is the prize. Unless you end up not being the one who wins it, that is.
I enjoy your writing and I hope you did well. I’ll look for video on YouTube.
Considering all the great thinkers throughout history, I am probably plagiarizing someone with those thoughts, but I couldn’t say who. Unless you can, feel free to use them as your own if you have the opportunity. It’s not likely that I will again.
2012-08-21
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