The perks of being laughed at!

We were having lunch, remembering our good old times of Corporate Training as freshers. We couldn’t believe it had already been a year but we hadn’t really walked a long way apart from each other, and felt happy about it. They were telling me how they laughed at a ‘seminar’ I gave at the Soft Skill Training. Let me give you a little bit of a background story here.

The module in the Soft Skill Training, was Presentation Skills. We were told to be teams of five or six, and prepare for seminars. A team could handle a single theme, breaking it up into parts, one person delivering each, or present something totally on our own, about anything under the sun. The more creative we were, the more points we would steal. Only one rule- Everyone must speak!

Now, all of us in our team agreed upon going our own ways. People talked about great personalities, achievements, programming and its technicalities, culture in different parts of India, and so on.

I had planned on doing something really out of the box. I wanted to surprise them. (Well, later I realized that I had surprised them way too much, though.)

And so, I decided to talk about James Bond!

Does it seem too absurd? Does it seem too inappropriate for a creative seminar at Corporate? Oh, who cares!? I’m going to stick on to James Bond! And then I dreamily remembered how Pierce Brosnan had swept me off my feet in Die Another Day.

Focusing back to that seminar, it was my turn, finally! I told one of my friends to play the Theme Music of James Bond before I started, and I walked on to the stage like every opening scene of the James Bond movie- Walk four steps, and suddenly turn right, with a gun in your hand!

I actually did that, and people stared at me, flabbergasted! I felt I could read the expression on everybody’s face- “Oh, no! No! What are you doing? You are going to screw this up, big time!”

I started with, “Well, that didn’t go too well, did it? You must be wondering what this is all about. And people who have already figured it out, must be thinking, that this girl watched Skyfall over the weekend and now she is showing off she did. That’s true, you’re right. I did watch the movie and I loved Bond. Now, that is why I want to talk to you about my undying love for this character, James Bond!”

Background story ends here. Let’s go back to the conversation at the lunch. Two of my friends admitted to have ‘laughed their asses off’ that day. At the time, I found it quite funny too, and I giggled heartily with them.

But back at my desk, when I was thinking about it, I realized I had made a fool of myself back then. People thought I was lame, kiddish and dumb! Or did I just misjudge the level of the audience? All I wanted is to be different. To break the walls of those rules laid out for a ‘typical’ or ‘ideal’ so-called seminar! Did I do it wrong? Oh, what have I done!?

That took me back to Sir Ken Robinson’s amazing talk on TED about schools, education and creativity.

Make some time and watch it here 

He points out, that children are not afraid of being wrong. They are not afraid to create. They are not bound by fears of keeping a reputation because they never bother about building one yet!

As we grow, we start living on a set of rules. We care about what people think about us. We want to understand their opinions and we struggle to change them to ‘ideal’. We want to be ‘right’. We want to be acknowledged. We want to be important. We always want to ‘go with the flow’. It changes us greatly, trapping us with stronger chains of fear. The fear of being wrong, being unheard and being laughed at. Bringing it down to the Indian nativity, the fear of ‘Log kya kahenge!?’

(It also depends on a number of other factors, but I won’t drift off to them now.)

It’s hard to break free from those fears, but it’s definitely worth the effort! The feeling of freedom to do and say whatever you want to, and be wherever you want to- it’s amazing! It brings me a sense of pride, a sense of confidence and it gives me drive to go and do something, that others think is outrageous!

Even when I am being laughed at, I laugh with them. But it never stops me from doing anything that gives me happiness. (I also faintly remember a quote that says something to the effect- ‘If someone laughs at your idea, go ahead with it. It’s worth a shot!’). And now that I don’t bother about keeping a reputation, it has been a lot easier and a lot happier to go ahead and do what I want to do, anyway. And there comes that smile, and with the smile I tell myself, “You did good!”

:)