“Mok, I hate you.”

It never fails to amuse me, how people get all jittery and shaky, when presenting an item to an audience. Reminiscing, it would be untrue for me to assume I was never once like that too. I would stammer and haw in front of an audience, and my world would shrink into something so tiny, that I would feel completely out of place in front of everyone. My mind would freeze, and time would draw like a blade.

I wouldn’t totally agree that one would need practice and participate in various toastmasters to be able to deliver a good speech which would be understood and communicated to the audience. To me, it is more about not betraying any emotion besides detachment to the people in-front of you. In our daily lives, whenever one can find unity among diversity, one will experience no fear. I quote Bhagavad Gita: “Performing your duty without attachment or aversion is a great antidote for the poison of fear.”

Which brings to mind another random quote:
“There is always a moment of dread in first looking at one’s portrait. It is how another perceives you, and you are sure their view must be truer than yours.”

Strange as it sounds, in the context of giving a public speech, one’s nervousness is actually rooted upon how he/she actually perceives himself to be or will react to when standing before himself. For example, if for some weird reason at all, you imagine that the moment you stand before an audience, they will laugh and jeer at you, what is actually happening in your subconscious is this:

You are picturing yourself standing before the yourself (the audience) and the you (the audience) is/are ironically laughing at you. Simply put, it is a self-esteem challenge that you are battling. Paradoxically, the more one imagines himself being put into or out of a undesired situation, the more likely will that event happen. I once read in book that psychiatrists refer this as the “self-manifestation prophecy” theory. I'm sure many of you would have experiences similar to this.

Moving on to a more personal issue, today my group which consists of four ladies and me were asked to tackle and present an economics problem to the lecture group. Here’s one the question that was asked which goes something like this:

Discuss the relative price elasticity of a cigarette, taking into consideration the factors, that affects a commodity’s price-elasticity of demand.

I’ve got to admit, it was a relatively easy question to tackle. The group prepared the answer in say 5mins? What tickled my funny bone was the other tougher and implied question: “Who will present the answer to the lecture.” It did not surprise me that the group unanimously volunteered me to present their findings without first approaching me. Now pardon my usage of suggestive profanities but WTF!? I don’t mean to be a coach potato and I do not deny that they voted me because they know I can present our answers but I had to turn down the invitation just for today since I was a little annoyed at how things that people generally abhor executing has a perverse habit of sidetracking towards me.

Here’s what I observed:

1stly, the girl next to me, told me that, the group had volunteered me to the job. I had to shyly decline though, giving the excuse that, I was in fact, not suitable for the job since I possessed little or no knowledge of the given question. There was some form of truth in it though which I will not go into. I was pretty adamant and declined their repeated invitations till it got pretty awkward. They got the picture nonetheless.

2ndly, they tried to get another guy seated in front of the row in front of us to present their answers. Excuse me but what a fucking joke but that was totally uncalled for.

3rdly, they tried to rationalize who among us (excluding me) was most suitable for the job. I seriously couldn’t care less who the lucky candidate would be as long as it was not me, though in my mind, I felt that the most eloquent one among us would be present the answers. Our group was asked to present question 8, so there was a lot of time for us to prepare our answers.

Finally, the moment came when it was our group to present our answers to the lecture. I glanced over to my right, and what do I see? One of them glared at me menacingly as though I was the cause of the plight. Cry me a river.

Very reluctantly and even more surprising, the 4 of them left their seats and moved over to present the answers. They had agreed that all 4 of them shall present their answers. There's a saying that Too many cooks spoil the broth, and I thought that it would be interesting if they could pull it off effectively since afterall, it was 4 people doing a job of one.

Frankly speaking, I thought that they performed an “okay” job in presenting the answers. I did understand the gist of what they were saying. In my opinion, they had communicated the answers effectively.

As they were making their ways back to their seat, their body language were telling me that I was their sorry little excuse that they had to make a spectacle of themselves in the lecture and can't help but feel that they themselves opined that they "fucked-it-up." Whatever. If they choose to believe it that way, it can't be helped. If I had to be their excuse or point of blame so be it. There's this saying that goes like this. "The strong look for more strength, and the weak look for excuses."

Anyway, I tried to be encouraging and I told them this sincerely: “You did well.” In exchange for my kind intentions, all I received was looks of contempt from each of them. Thats ok with me really since I'm usually nonchalent about the opinions others hold in regards to myself. What really shook my world this afternoon was when one of the girls among the 4 of them, a girl whom I would consider a close friend of mine, came up towards me and said: “Mok, I hate you.”

“Mok, I hate you.”

How fucking pathetic. My world down, in just four words.