faith4jesus247
I'm pretty proud of myself. I realized something new about myself without having to lay down on a black leather sofa and have someone with crossed knees, a notebook, and glasses leading me to the discovery! Resulting in....my "aha" moment!

Sarcasm has been my way of life since.....well.....I can't actually remember a time it wasn't my main form of communication! I do know that I became wittier with my sarcasm in college, making that my main source of identity. I love making people laugh...I love laughing at myself...and my goal is to remove any possible awkwardness in my encounters with others. But I'm smart, too. And a lot of people don't know that. I love to learn, love to teach, and crave challenges in life. I don't want the answer to be given to me...I want to figure it out for myself. My favorite, favorite thing is working with numbers. Creating excel tables or budgets or figuring out how much it'll cost to drive from here to Mountain View, California with "x" amount of dollars at "y" miles per gallon. FUN! :)

But about 6 months ago, I was in my dad's Bible class, and we all had to prepare our thoughts ahead of time on a certain controversial topic. He went around the table, asking everyone to share their thoughts one-by-one. I was next to last to share. The closer he got to me, the more my hand began to shake and I began to get nervous. The person sitting to my left knew me fairly well, and was utterly confused when he saw my shaking hand. He asked me after class if I was cold, or if I was truly nervous. I admitted that I didn't care for public speaking very much, which seemed to surprise him. He assumed that since I was so outgoing and comfortable with people, that I would naturally have no problem talking in front of a dozen others. Wrong.

But it got me thinking. How can I love people so much, and be so afraid to talk to more than one person at a time? What am I afraid of? And...out of the blue...I got it last week. It just hit me. My "aha" moment! I am scared to death to have someone judge my serious thoughts...my intelligence. I can sit around with people all day laughing at my bad jokes, my job, my weight, my clothes, my car....anything. Anything but my intelligence. I can handle someone thinking I'm not funny, but I would be so offended if someone didn't think I was smart. So I don't show that side of me very often. I protect it, in a way. I don't know if that makes any sense to anyone else, but it finally makes sense to me. Public speaking involves sharing my serious side....and that's not something I'm able to laugh at myself about. And until I can...I guess my hand will continue to shake every time someone asks me for my opinion in front of a group of people.
2 Responses
  1. Unknown Says:

    Ah, so true! The part of ourselves that we cherish most is the part we don't show people, even if it's where we get a lot of our sense of identity. I'm glad you were willing to share, though! :)


  2. Move over Oprah! Oh wait...is this laughing at your serious side?


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