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It can be painful for us to watch someone, anyone, struggling to get their words out in public. In fact, a YouGuv survey once revealed ‘the fear of public speaking’ as being the third most commonly held fear in Britain today. I remember with a shudder the day I once gave a best man’s speech. For its punchline, I shared an ill-judged cricketing joke about the groom’s “googlies” ... which fell completely flat - until the bride’s deaf grandmother broke the silence by asking, loudly: “Are you going to be much longer?” At which point the entire room collapsed in uncontrollable hilarity. Laughing at me, of course, not with me. So I think the reaction to Theresa May’s conference speech this week, which continues to rumble on, might speak very eloquently - if we let it - of our own insecurities, and the embarrassments we suffer, when we’re out front. In a sense, it’s the classic anxiety dream come to life: that all eyes are upon us, and we can’t speak, or we’re wearing no clothes, or we’ve finally been found out (which is a particularly common fear among CEOs, as it happens). It’s just our ego talking - the insecure chattering in our head that worries so much about what others think, how good we look, how we compare with the rest... Yet that ego can bind us so tight that we can fear ‘dying a death’ for the whole of our life. From a spiritual perspective, then, it’s not as bad as we might think, when we suffer embarrassment, or when things don’t go to plan, because the process of transformation requires the ego cracking open to find a deeper, soulful way of life, beyond. It’s an invitation to put off the old self, as the apostle Paul writes, and to put on the new. And to express more of who we can assuredly become in the process. As Father Richard Rohr puts it, “while the False Self babbles on, largely about itself, the True Self always has something good to say.” It’s certainly more generously focused on love and service than it is on the smoothness of appearances. And as I look back to that wedding reception, now, I know that the day was not about me or my failed star turn, anyway, but on the couple and their families. Which is a liberating lesson for any public speaker, as it goes. It’s liberating, too, to remember that it’s all right - in fact, it’s good! - to find ourselves centre stage, from time to time - and not to fear speaking bravely in a meeting; or taking the lead in a group; or making that speech - so long as we’re prepared to let the soul speak through the cracks.