I was standing on the stage speaking, in front of the microphone and the audience, and suddenly my mind Just went blank. Not knowing what to say next and too frightened to run off the stage, I tried to think really hard to recall the next line of my speech, and I failed. 5 seconds, 10 seconds…… Still nothing came to my mind. The pause was so noticeable that everyone must now know that I have forgotten the script of my speech. Feeling my feet sinking Into the ground, I took a deep breath to stay calm, kept myself from trembling, and coughed softly to break this killing silence In the room.
But when hearing my voice getting shaky, I only swallowed hard to make It much worse. There was a nagging voice kept echoing In my head, saying, “It’s all your fault, you did it to yourself and now you deserve It. ” And this drew me back to the day before yesterday, when I sat In front of my laptop, Just started rushing to finish the speech on the assigned topic when the deadline was approaching. The topic for the speech contest was ‘Mahatma Is my top concern”. And as a victim of procrastination, though I got It 2 weeks before the final round, I didn’t started working n it until the last day before the deadline.
After 3 hours of exploration of the topic, having come up with loads of “concerns” that I was not even in the least bit concerned about. I had no clue as to which topic to pick. The good news is that I finally made it for the deadline. While the bad news is that I just got so little time to go through the script. The audiences’ big applause drew me back to the scene. Anyway, I was supposed to put on end to this endless pause. So I jumped to the ending part and went off the stage.
This could-have-been-avoided blackout moment really embarrassed me, and it also taught me a lot about life. In movies, the director can always say “cut” and re-shoot the scene, but our life is actually in a live theatre where I can’t “cut” whenever I want. Even if I mess up too badly, the play would not lust “stop” and the curtain go down temporarily to cover up my mistakes. Of course, there is no perfect live performance. But at least we can always make sure that we did do our best. Get fully prepared for our life, and do not let the blackout moment fail us again.