Words are powerful. Or can be. Depends how you use them.
I always try to limit any speech or lecture I make to 30 minutes. I do not believe the modern human is capable of active listening for more than that time frame. It is pointless to continue to try to drive points home past 45 minutes max. With some AV aid, you could retain attention for slightly longer I suppose, but really not that much more. When the human brain has started believing that information should be given out in the format of reels that go from 15 to 30 seconds, even one solid minute of information is too long. Going from there, a lecture that goes beyond an hour is a touch too long.
To be perfectly clear, this is not me saying I am good at lectures and that people listen to me. On the contrary, it just means I try my best to limit me torturing people with information. Because when it comes to me making speeches, there’s no decoration. And that’s not very oratorical of me.
The youngest of my sibling bunch Samuel is the same way. He flounders and hems and haws and listening to his public speeches just makes me tired. But give him a comfortable chair, some leg room, and space-time to converse, and he can chat up a storm. He is brilliant at that.
Conversely, the eldest of our bunch Eli is the exact opposite. Never give her space to chat. She’ll be your biggest supporter, repost your quips and quotes, and have the time of her life tagging along on your most random plans and trips. But if you ask her to tell you a story in conversation, she will leave you hanging; you and the punch-line, to be honest. There have been many times she has told me stories only for me to repeat it to people so they can follow. Because she can’t tell it properly herself. However, give her a platform and a topic and she will be like a statesman on the go. Very weird.
Feli, my younger sister, has been known as the crab, the turtle or the snail of the family, when we were growing up. Because her stubborn ass can maintain stoic silence for days. Come to that, she can also sit in between the driver and passenger seats of a Gypsy for a 10-hour journey and never utter a single sound of discomfort. Born stubborn. One fine day, however, the caterpillar became a very chatty butterfly and now it’s all we can do to shut her up. Became a lawyer and everything. Jabs and quick one-liners are her specialty and she delights in her own mind. Weird for someone who was mostly silent her entire childhood.
Me, I write. Whether I am good or not is not my concern; I just throw it out on the internet. I know I am better at it than speaking, at any rate. My speeches and lectures are mostly limited to government platforms and those are very specific topic-oriented and very often extempore. Like I said, hardly ever decorative. Not the least bit fancy. Any improvement is glacial especially considering where I was in 2017 when I first started public speaking in Mizo and I’d stop mid-sentence in front of a crowd because I could not think whether the sentence was supposed to proceed. Glacial, yes but all in all, good, I hope. Any progress is progress and all that.
When we were younger, dad would divide us four into two groups and make us debate. We sucked. Mostly because none of us are very competitive and had no desire to win any evening debate. Besides, my partner was usually Samuel and as previously demonstrated, he could barely speak. Also he was in kindergarten, I think. Not a strong partner. Dad would go mad trying to get us to talk, but when even forcing us to be polite and say “Good morning Uncle” or “Good evening Auntie” was the beginning of World War Z, debates were out of the question. I could have told him that. Anyway, in the end, he gave in and settled for us reading. Comic books, as starters. The man really gave up. But all of us decided to up our game as public speakers as adults so maybe there was something there, after all. Maybe.
Words are an inexhaustible source of magic. I will talk about this in my next blog. I just wanted to say words can be powerful. They have so much potential. But sometimes, we just don’t use them right.
