7/4/18

Do you like to be in the spotlight?

Do you like to be in the spotlight? There are people that seem to enjoy it and others - like me - who it makes very uncomfortable. I still vividly remember the Bat Mitzva of one of my daughters that we celebrated in the US. She and I both gave speeches at the celebration. My daughter, who does not particularly like English and does not feel comfortable speaking it, spoke beautifully - slowly and clearly. And then I, a native English speaker, spoke. And I raced through my speech, which as a result was probably largely unintelligible. I couldn't help myself - I felt very uncomfortable and nervous being in the spotlight and in front of a group.
I thought of this today when we had visitors to Palestinian Media Watch, including the father of Taylor Force, an American victim of Palestinian terror in whose name a law was recently passed in the US to greatly reduce any aid to the Palestinian Authority as long as they continue to pay for terror. (And on July 2, 2018, the Israeli Parliament passed a law to deduct the amount of money paid to terrorists and their families from the tax money that Israel collects for the PA and transfers to them - the reason for their present visit to Israel.) Before the visit, the director of PMW went around the office asking people to talk about different items from the PA media that we had translated, specifying the items we should mention. And he asked me to speak about a specific item. So I was actually reviewing in my head what I would say in the hopes of feeling more comfortable. In the end he skipped over me - apparently feeling the guests had heard enough. And funnily enough, I was slightly disappointed (Hopefully that indicates some improvement, a reduction of my nervousness!) - but only slightly.

2 comments:

  1. Glad you are blogging! Excellent writing... I so admire your efforts with your on behalf of Israel.

    A teacher at YU taught me by her example how to deal with stage fright...walk while you talk, use hand outs or write on a board, smile at the people, take a breath in between "paragraphs". It helped me overcome my jitters

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