The Fear of Public Speaking

A pale, feminine voice transmitted through the air with the tone of nervousness and embarrassment.  Unexpectedly, the voice came to an abrupt halt and blurted out the words, “That’s all.”  Her trembling hands were evident as she collected her notes from atop the speaker’s podium.  As she walked away from the scene of her humiliation, her wobbly knees bent and buckled, conveying the impression that she might at any moment inadvertently plummet to the ground.  The look on her face as she hurriedly fled to her desk was tainted with grave discomfiture.  Glancing into her eyes, I saw the reflection of my own inescapable fate awaiting me.  After the girl took her seat, I started to feel the pit of my stomach growing into a giant abyss.  I could feel it harboring a calamity of uneasiness and fear, like the uncanny calm before an impending storm.

My mind wandered farther, and I was abandoned to the plains of my imagination.  The storm brewed and my thoughts began to darken and deteriorate.  I envisioned myself immersed in the malevolent gloom of a cold and damp fog.  Time in this new world slowed to an undisturbed silence.  Every passing second I endured felt as though I had journeyed perilously out of all ages of the universe.  Each moment painfully came and passed as I suffered them endlessly.  Suddenly, a sound pulsated through the halls of my mind and disrupted the stony silence that had imprisoned me.  The sound was the presence of a voice.  Its tone was stern, its pitch was fierce. Its message was abrupt and unambiguous. “Michael, you’re up next.”

Her words rushed through my mind like the winds of time, extinguishing the flame of my inner peace and harmony.  Panic crept into my mind and fear swiftly followed.  Alas, I heard the horrific roars of the beasts of anguish.  Miraculously, the world around me began to alter and as I peered across the new landscape, my mind was flooded with a wild river of reminiscence.  Beasts and birds became my classmates and professor; trees and plants become desks.  The damp fog and leaves illuminated by moonlight become sunlight purring through the windows casting the room in both light and shadow.  I was now immersed in the academic terrain of a college classroom and at the mercy of the class.  I gathered my note cards and reluctantly ventured to the podium. 

After I reached my dreaded destination I turned and peered out in to the classroom, forcing my eyes to look out onto the faces of humanity.  As I awaited permission from my professor to initiate my speech, my mind began to wander once more and my eyes followed intuitively.  My eyes made leaps and bounds from object to object, person to person, detail to detail.  As they scanned in unison across the room, they fell upon the title of a book lying at every desk:  The Art of Public Speaking.  Some were open, some were closed, but each of them bared this identical insignia which manifested the doom that would soon come to pass.
With great despondency on my behalf, the professor’s words reached my ears. “I’m ready when you are, Michael.”  Those very words were an envoy of fear and despair.  My heart stopped and my lungs could no longer breathe.  My mind began to freeze as my impending doom seemed inevitable.  Suddenly, I caught a glimpse of a cold, black device in the hand of my professor.  For her, the sinister device served as a clock, counting each and every second like passing sands through an hour glass.  For me, it replicated the functions of a defibrillator strongly and cruely shocking me back to life.  My heart began to beat once more.  Motion returned to my appendages, but my hands began to tremble and my knees began to give.  I had been brought back to life only to confront a fear greater than any I had known before.  With the black device counting menacingly away, I knew I would have to start speaking soon. 

As my first words escaped from the dark and damp chasm of my mouth, I watched as they united in convergence with the ears of my audience.  No more were they the faces of students, but rather of judges and in the center of them was their leader stone-faced and narrowed-eyed.  In her right hand she held a pencil and in her left hand she held the black device.  With every second that passed, it seemed as though she were writing a novel of my mistakes and ill mannerisms.  Observing her, I could almost feel her meticulously scrutinizing my every vocalization and gesture as my mind began to fall into despair.

My heartbeat elevated; my diaphragm began to contract faster and faster with every word I spoke.  My eyes began to resist movement.  My lips turned motionlessness, and my mind went blank.  All I could conceive was my fear and that in the end it would completely consume me.  I desperately started to examine my outline, searching for my place, rushing frantically to find the words to go on.  My very last thought ran rampant through my mind as I imagined myself setting down among my classmates, falling deep into a disconcerting and humiliating defeat.  For I had imagined that the beasts of anguish had overtaken me in full and that they had now began to feed with a ravenous hunger on morsels of shame and embarrassment.

Standing before my professor, my classmates, and my fears, the last fibers of hope and harmony dissolved from my being.  I prepared to retreat from my stand at the podium and return to my seat in dissatisfaction until unexpectedly, fate conspired in a way that I had not anticipated. In the deepest darkness depths of my mind a light began to shine across its corroders, for a tiny flame was born.  At first, the flame flickered like a lamb, trying to survive, until at last it grew into a raging lion.  As the loin’s roar echoed through my mind, the flame continued to grow and flash over into a blazing holocaust, devouring my fear and despair, and with it the fiendish beasts of anguish that had once fed on me.  The frozen stature of my thoughts began to thaw to the blazing fire in my mind.  As the roaring flames smote the last of the beasts to ashes, words began to flow over my lips like spring waters down a river long frozen in the cold and icy embodiment of Mother Nature.
When the last words of my speech fell upon the ears of judgment, I was overwhelmed with abiding ecstasy.  I collected my outline from atop the podium and made my way back to my seat, this time not through a damp and malevolent fog but through a classroom of my peers.  And as I took my seat, I drew a deep breath and turned to the soul who would go next and said, “It’s really not as a frightening as it seems.”