And.

On nervousness, excitement, and the simple words that allow both to exist.

I was nervous about that talk.

It wasn’t the manageable kind of nervousness. This one lingered. Insidious. Constantly chattering about every time I’d done rubbish, providing ample doses of guilt before I even walked into the room.

But I was also excited. The topic mattered to me. The room was full of people I respected. And in these situations there is a performative part in all of us that wants to show off its feathers. Like a peacock.

Both of those things were true at the same time.

The talk happened. It went well. I think. The audience was engaged. You can tell when people are listening to you by the way their heads waltz to the tonality and cadence of your words. And their eyes follow the story your hands are telling.

And at one point, about fifteen minutes in, the microphone stopped working.

I kept going.

A few weeks later, I was sitting with a mentor. Someone whose thinking I trust. I was trying to describe how the whole thing had felt. The preparation, the nerves, the moment the microphone cut out, the strange mix of relief and satisfaction at the end.

I said something like: it went really well, but the microphone stopped working.

She paused.

Then she said: try it with and.

Sorry ?

I wasn’t getting it at first.

The talk went well, she said. And the microphone stopped working.

I contemplated for a moment. Then said it quietly to myself first. I felt the difference.

But corners you. It forces you to choose. It tells you that one thing has to win. Either the talk went well, or the microphone failed. It forces a verdict. And in that verdict, something must lose. The thing that is uncomfortable. The one that we start to believe is total failure and embarassment.

And holds both. It doesn’t ask you to decide. It lets the nervousness and the excitement stay in the same room without one of them having to leave.

We have this instinct to resolve tension. To say I was nervous but I got through it.

Who the eff said the effing nervousness is a problem?

Expletives. A normal part of her coaching vocabulary.

Nervousness is a signal. Not a problem to get over. We have got to stop thinking that the fairytale ending is a place where the harder feeling loses.

It isn’t a bloody game. Nervousness is not a competitor to defeat. It’s just another vessel that sits next to excitement. It’s bloody full and it’s bloody real !

Photo by Riefki Nugraha on Unsplash

Just another vessel.

I’ve been thinking about this in places beyond that conversation. My days are usually filled with these kinds of statements:

School was good but I didn’t do well in history.

The game was okay but I played terribly.

I am looking forward to the weekend but I have so much to do.

This is a classic case of allowing one feeling to cancel the other. The game can be okay. And she can have played terribly. Both survive. Both are worthwhile.

I think about it at work, when someone delivers feedback.

The session was good but the handover was messy.

The but arrives like an undertaker at the gates of a mortuary. Instead if the session was good and the handover was messy, we have two things to work with rather that what appears to be a winner and loser.

I think about it with the word yet. My children were taught that at primary school. To add it to the end of every sentence one was unsure about

I haven’t figured out what I want to say…yet.

I’m not the parent I want to be…yet.

I can't figure this out…yet.

Yet doesn’t lie to you. It doesn’t pretend you’ve arrived somewhere you haven’t. It just reminds you of an unfinished story. That where you are right now needn’t be your identity, if you don’t want it to be.

It’s a word that keeps the door open without making any promises about what’s behind it.

We are all, in some way or another, unfinished.

And I think language knows this before we do. The words we reach for. The buts, the yets, the ands. They shape the story we’re allowed to tell about ourselves. They decide whether we get to hold two things at once or whether we’re forced to pick a side.

The microphone stopped working. And the talk went well. And I was nervous. And I was glad I showed up.

All of it. At the same time.

I'm not being contradictory. That’s just the truth.