I think one thing people feel an adult should confidently do or know how to do is speak eloquently and confidently in front of other people. You would think that by a certain age, standing in front of a room, gathering your thoughts and expressing yourself clearly should be as natural as breathing. Unfortunately, I am still figuring that one out, and it has not gotten better with time, maybe even worse. It is not that I cannot speak, in fact, when I am comfortable, I can talk quite a lot. The problem comes when I have to speak formally, especially when everyone’s attention is suddenly focused on me. Public speaking has always felt like one of those skills that adulthood assumes you have automatically downloaded somewhere along the way. I mean you see a lot of adults doing it so freely and easily.
What makes it more frustrating is that I genuinely want to be good at it. I feel like if you want to hit certain strides in your life or career, you have to be able to own the room I want to be the kind of person who can walk into a room, stand in front of a crowd and speak clearly without constantly worrying about whether I am making sense. I want to be eloquent enough to express an argument exactly the way it sounds in my head and perhaps most importantly, I want to be able to do all of that without stage fright taking over. Whenever I have to speak publicly, I usually try to prepare as much as possible. I go over what I want to say in my head, sometimes repeatedly, and try to anticipate the questions or reactions that might come afterward. I even take pills that lower my heart rate. I have discovered that preparation helps, but it does not completely eliminate the nervousness. There is always that moment when you realise, Okay, everyone is actually looking at me now.
Interestingly, some of my most stressful experiences have also been the ones that taught me the most. There have been moments when I knew exactly what I wanted to say, only for my brain to suddenly decide that finding the simplest words was an unreasonable request. You start a sentence confidently, halfway through you realise it is going somewhere you did not intend, and suddenly you are mentally searching for an emergency exit and sometimes you can feel the disconnect between yourself and the crowd, like they are just waiting for you to finish saying whatever and leave.
I think that is also what adulthood is about. We tend to imagine adults as people who have everything figured out, when the reality is that most people are probably learning as they go. Being an adult does not necessarily mean being completely confident at everything. Sometimes it simply means being willing to do something you are not yet completely comfortable with and learning from the experience. Public speaking is definitely one of those things for me. I am still figuring out how to make my words flow naturally, how to organise my thoughts quickly and how to stand in front of people without feeling like I am being examined under a microscope.
Hopefully, one day I will get to the point where I can walk onto a stage, look at a room full of people and think, I've got this. Until then, I suppose I will keep practising, preparing and occasionally hoping my brain remembers the English language when it is finally my turn to speak.