Victories in Disguise

Part 8: January 17, 2015 [3:45 PM]

Do you smell something burning?


Of course not.  It wasn’t a real bomb.  Safety tip:  If you do, in fact, smell something burning, please go check on that now.  I’ll be here when you get back.  All good? 


Awesome. 


After the metaphorical mushroom cloud evaporated, I was left standing before the crowd at the MHAI gathering with the weight of their eyes upon me.  It’s an interesting turn of phrase, don’t you think?  “I felt the weight of eyes upon me.”


This instance is unique because, in some form or another, everyone already knows the origin of this particular figure of speech.  There is a physical sensation attributed to being observed, especially when we don’t wish to be.  We’ve all felt it, even at times we know we aren’t being watched, because our brains are hardwired to be on the lookout for eyes upon us.  It’s a remnant, you see, from a time when humankind wasn’t the dominant predator on the planet.  A steady gaze on you in the past meant some lurking feline with an overbite just put you on the menu.


Back then, humans were both the Kibbles and the Bits.


For that vital reason, the uneasy feeling is subconscious.  You have absolutely no control over it.  Your brain is just doing its job in the background, giving you a slight tingle on the back of the neck or slight pressure on the left to get you to turn, to take in more information, to observe your environment a little more closely, to not die a while longer.  Though there is no physical external force, there is still a physical sensation.  This is the power the brain holds over the body.


Anxieties and phobias could be considered other remnants of this lost era of human history.  The wiring for such nervous vigilance has been passed down from generation to generation, unchanged.  The world, of course, is anything but unchanging. 


It’s not in Nature’s nature to stay the same.


And so, they shifted from useful survival tool into hindering shackles.  Now, when I say I stood to speak before a crowd of sixty people, you can understand that it felt as if the weight of their eyes upon me could be measured in metric tons.  Metaphorically speaking, that is.


Now, you wouldn’t know I was having trouble from the audience.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve had a lot of practice appearing as if nothing is bothering me.  It’s a lot of work, though, looking so at ease.


I introduced myself as Josh. 


Okay, not the way I wanted to go, but there are worse things than forgetting my own suffix.  My original Social Security card left out the letter ‘h’ before my parents ordered me a new one.  ‘Josua’ would have been way worse. 


Moving on, I segued onto the subject of how I learned of the project, all the while so intensely focus on maintaining a steady, casual tone, volume, and pace that I nearly lost track of the words coming out of my mouth.  This is the domino effect of anxieties, where so much effort is put into anticipating potential problems that it causes problems of its own, leading to further attempts to correct it, causing more problems due to split focus and so on ad infinitum.  I just used Latin.  So, you know I’m serious and can understand why I’ve actively avoided situations such as this in the past.


The key word, by the way, in the opening line of the previous paragraph is ‘nearly’.


I ended my turn with the imaginary exploding hot potato without incident.  My tone was calm and I even managed to keep from stammering.  That’s always a win in my book.  My heart was racing, as if I had just run all the way here from the Red Line, and I was carefully hiding the tremble in my hands.


Have I mentioned how grateful I am for pockets?