Toastmasters #2 — It’s all made up

Posted in evolution on 04.04.06@941 by pjh

I gave my second Toastmasters’ speech tonight, the one where you’re supposed to organize it. My brain had decided to forget about the commitment, so I hadn’t really prepared. Nonetheless, the show must go on. So on I went.

I’m generally a relaxed sort of person, so it came as something of a shock to find myself up on stage, heart racing, legs literally trembling. And yet I got through it. Some audience members came up to me and said how much they enjoyed the speech. All despite the fact that I was faking it.

I hadn’t really prepared, not in the way that an actor might, for example. I could give that same speech a hundred times and they’d all be different. All recognizably the same speech, but as though they were given in parallel universes, each speech a twisted copy of every other.

Remember this. It’s all made up. The speech you hear isn’t the speech I’m giving. The confidence that you see isn’t real, it’s fakery. If only you could see the mad vibrations of my legs, you’d know that there’s more courage in it than appears on the surface. And yet, fakery is enough. The world works on perception, not on reality.

If you believe, then it’s true, or true enough for most purposes. For your belief to work, I don’t need to believe too. But if I perceive that you believe, then I might believe too, and so make it real. In this mad game of Ouroborus, you and I can create something real through the imperfect reflection of one another’s fakery.