Public exposure

Above is one of my favourite pictures. It’s titled “selfconfidence”. I cannot give credit to the photographer for I have no idea whom it might be. But this is how I TRY to walk through life.

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Yesterday, I made a presentation before fifteen people in a room with no windows.

Years ago, I used to teach scuba diving. It’s easy to hold an audience entranced when you explain how the graceful scorpion fish hides a potent poison in its spinal barbs. Students listen with baited breath, half expectant, half fearful to meet such a specimen in a dark alley on the reef.

Yesterday however, my subject was different. I was invited to talk about Intergenerational Transfer of Knowledge within the Public Service. What can I say? Life takes you strange places. Before you smirk, I want to point out that this was an open invitation conference. People attended on a strictly voluntary basis. I will not name the department, but never did I have such a dull-eyed, sceptical audience.

Sometimes, when an audience particularly intimidates me, I imagine the public in flowery bathing suits, eyes very wide behind the mask. Eyes that say “you’re the only thing standing between me and premature death” or “I’m about to bolt to the surface in panic”. Every instructor knows these eyes.

It helps to look at a stern, high-ranking man in suit and tie, with an expensive watch and distracted look, and imagine him ineffectively dog-paddling with fins on and wide arms swipes, a tentacular jeopardy to any diver within range. It puts things in perspective.

Anyway. Yesterday, my audience was dull, challenging, and unresponsive. That’s excellent. It threw me off balance and took me out of my comfort zone.

Every person that stands in front of others to speak comes bearing a gift or a message. Sometimes the gift is a lousy trinket from a dollar store, not worth your time. Sometimes, the message is so garbled by the speaker’s idiosyncrasies that it gets lost.

But in the end, it’s an offer. The audience is free to buy it or not. Free to like, dislike, listen, get up and leave, clap, become aggressive, thank me or just sit there with dull eyes.

I’m neither a saleswoman nor an advocate, I’m just a messenger. The Intergenerational Transfer of Knowledge in the Public Service is not a matter that grabs my heartstrings. There was a time when I would have been deeply affected; now, I look at a presentation that didn't go over very well…and I’m afraid I don’t overly care. Is that maturity?