Only a few people know this about me; I’ve always wanted to host events. Not funeral receptions though but other corporate events like awards, entertainment events, fashion shows, business dinners etc. But despite always wanting it, I always ran when it seemed such opportunities were coming to me.
It wasn’t my ability to speak good English that was my concern. One of my main fears had always been my lisping. While growing up, people around me had always used that to make fun of me. They would mock me by repeating whatever word or sentence I said that lisping wouldn’t help me pronounce right. The earliest memory I have of such treatment was when I was still in nursery school. I could remember I was in Nursery 3 then because I and my sister had just moved to the school then. Two or three days later, I can’t remember exactly what happened but some boys in the class hid my chair and when I was told they were the culprit, I demanded they give it back to me, only that I didn’t say chair but “tear”. Till our primary session, I never saw the end of it. My classmates kept using it to torment me. The truth was that I never knew my inability then to pronounce the “ch” sounds was a problem till that encounter. I eventually learnt to pronounce words with “ch* sounds but other words were still a problem.
Another fear was that I wasn’t funny enough to add the element of humour while hosting.
Nevertheless, these didn’t stop me from pretending to host events. While washing plates or Clothes, I’d always imagine I was on a stage doing my thing. You’d actually think I was legit mad. I watched a lot of foreign event shows, made a lot of corrections on myself and by myself, I learnt how to speak gently so people could understand me regardless of my lisps. I learnt to enunciate syllables where needed so as to enable easy communication. These I did with the hopes that one day I would get the chance to host an event.
Two Sundays ago, I finally got the chance to tick that off my wish list. Prior to the event, when I got the call, I was very sure it was time and when the D-Day came, even though I was scared at first, it eventually got easy. There were things I said that people laughed to but I didn’t push it because that wasn’t my thing. I realized that for someone who wasn’t a comedian like me, I just needed to focus more on delivery and self composure than making people laugh.
So what was the lesson I learnt from this experience? I was so afraid of going into this part of my life because of physical limitations when all I should have done was to work around those limitations and find a way to make it work out for me. That’s one thing that affects some of us. We look at situations around us and allow those situations to affect our dreams, to make us choose miserableness over fulfillment. Just start first, trust me, if you’re really supposed to be doing that thing and this is your time, it would work out.
I was very sure hosting was an ability in me but I let low self esteem take the wheel. Don’t let low self esteem into the vehicle of your future cause it never wants to take the back seat, it wants to be the driver.
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It so happened you overcame the default which wanted to demean you to a dark room. It’s never easy but I believe the road is getting clearer.
Yes, Emeka. It is indeed.
Interesting piece. Didn’t know you had such a problem. Anyway, the moral remains – you can do whatever you want to do if you are courageous enough to take the first step
Thank you so much, James. And quite the teachable moral from the post.
This is beautiful
Thank you so much, Signet Ring