A Speechless Society

“It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.”
Mark Twain

A Speechless Society

I have a couple of friends who struggle to finish a sentence. And it is alarming to me that they can not complete a thought or express it. It will start strong, like a burst, and then dwindle down and finish with a weak “or whatever”.

Of course, I want to blame the American education system (insert rueful smiley emoji).

I don’t know the why. We still have Show and Tell portions in our classrooms, one hopes. High School still has Speech classes and Debate. In fourth grade, each student has to read out loud.

After that horrible shooting in Florida, we were all impressed by how well the kids delivered their messages. Debate classes, dontcha think?

We know that fear of Public Speaking is way up at the top of the List of Fears. I think that it is really fear of embarrassment and anyone can get past that. If you screw it up, you admit it with a smile and move on. Learning that lesson isn’t too hard. Though, like anyone, I have choked in front of an audience too.

We all agree that everyone should be able to finish a sentence and complete a thought. We all know people who have not learned how to do that thing. Awareness and practice and patience is the key to the delivery vehicle.

Let us take a quick look at my brother. He made a quick 90 second video introducing his blog post Sharing Books Intergenerationally on his Profound Living site. Watch it and see how smooth it is, hand gestures, eye contact and the whole list of “how to speak”.

This is from practice and a lot of it. For him, it was a one-off, probably one take and unrehearsed with a simple message. Still, I don’t think I could riff for 90 seconds and be clean with it.

Awareness, practice and patience.