On Public Speaking and Shame
I gave the first public address of my life when I was five.
As the rep of my class at the kindergarten graduation, it fell to me to deliver words of wisdom to the 300 or so classmates and parents there. It was a monumental occasion, and I stood at the podium with gravitas.
Well actually… I stood on a high stool behind the podium. With gravitas. I was so much shorter than other kids my age that I needed it to be just visible over the podium.
No matter. I knew my speech would be historical. And it was.
To my knowledge, I’m the only kid in the history of Garden City Kindergarten to have tumbled off the stage in the middle of a graduation address.
Yes, I physically fell off the stage.
Nobody had bothered to check whether the stool was stable (it wasn’t), but everyone was laughing at the result.
Better yet, my parents were recording the whole time and started showing it to our entire extended family, our neighbors, their extended families, and anyone else who happened to visit us.
It brought immense joy to them, and immeasurable shame to me. In fact, as far as I remember, the episode began more than 30 years of extreme stage fright for me. Anxieties leading to onstage meltdowns leading to shame leading to more anxieties. A whirling circle of lower self-esteem.
Years later, after I’d worked countless hours to overcome my fear of the stage, I’d go back and re-watch, finally, that nightmarish moment.
What I saw shocked me.
Yes, I did fall, my head vanishing from the podium with a bang, followed by the audience’s gasps and laughter.
But then something incredible happened.
The little five year-old Andrew just got up, righted the stool, stepped on, and finished the speech.
No shame. No fear. No tear.
What amazed me even more was the fact that I had no memory of this at all. It’s as if little Andrew hit the ground and heard all the laughter — but the “shame” didn’t register, or perhaps wasn’t even a tangible notion.
As someone who has been deathly afraid of public embarrassment all my life, I had no idea — and indeed couldn’t possibly imagine — that an infant version of me was immune to it.
But then another question gripped me.
When did I learn about shame? At what moment did I sniff the danger of public embarrassment and inhale the notion that it was a real threat to my social survival?
In fact, when do most of us learn about shame? And for how many of us did it turn into a general fear of speaking up — even when we needed to be heard?
Because if we’ve learned anything from what went before and what’s going on today, progress requires that brave people speak up with heart and eloquence.
Women speaking up against harassment. Victims speaking up against bullies. Citizens speaking up against tyrants. And children speaking up to stop the destruction of their planet.
Imagine if many of them stayed silent for fear of public embarrassment.
What a shame that’d be.
