Lessons from Gandhi

As PT blogger Michael J. Formica noted, today is the 140th anniversary of the birth of Mohandas K. Gandhi. In honor of the event, I thought I'd share a post I wrote a few years ago about how his life inspired me to think differently about some of my challenges, such as my troubles with speech.

From the time I was young, one of my biggest sources of shame has been my difficulty at times with verbal communications. While at some times, words come easily (and sometimes ceaselessly, as others have told me), other times my brain simply stops. I know what I want to say, but am unable to get my mouth to form the words. At these times, I either freeze or find myself repeating the same word over and over and over again, as if to gain the momentum I need to get over the wall that had has suddenly appeared between my brain and my mouth.

In fact, one of my earliest memories is of my mother making me jump out of my skin by grabbing my arms, looking me in the face and saying, "Spit it out!" I was completely humiliated by this, but I simply couldn't help it. I just couldn't make my mouth work. And stress seemed to make it worse. Today, I've gotten very good at gestures. Frequently at work someone runs by quick and says something to me that requires a quick response. Knowing I won't be able to form the answer in time, I find myself using the "thumbs up" sign a lot. Or nodding. It works. I don't think even my family knows how frequently this is used because of necessity, rather than choice.

Contributing to all this are my difficulties with the rules of social discourse/conversation. Even when my impediment is not acting up, I often find myself lagging behind others in conversations. By the time I formulate what I want to say, the conversation moves on to something else.

As I get older, I find I have more fun that gets tossed into the mix. Now, sometimes, I find that I can get the words out, but the words I think I'm saying and words that come out are completely different. Sometimes it's as glaring as saying "basket" for "steak." Other times it's more subtle. I don't always know that I've done it until someone else tells me. I've ordered at restaurants, had the wrong thing come back, and when I question the order, I am told that that is what I did order. The other day, I told someone that I had had "Life Magazine" for breakfast!

Anyway, when I was younger, I was deeply embarrassed by all of this, by how much I struggled to get the right words out. I used to tell myself I was stupid. But nowadays, I realize it's just part of being me, and I just have to learn to go with it, laugh with it.

For many years, I have been a great admirer of Gandhi - in fact, since I saw Richard Attenborough's award winning movie about his life. Watching the story of how he single mindedly pursued truth was inspiring to me. A single man, brings down such a mighty empire, simply by refusing to give in to what he knows is unjust, no matter what it costs him (and it cost him a lot).

I found a lot of commonality in his story. His razor sharp focus on what interested him. His absolute resoluteness in his beliefs. His constant seeking of truth.

As it is with all of my pet interests, seeing this movie drove me to read everything I could find on the Mahatma. What I was quite shocked upon finding, was that the Mahatma had some very similar problems as I had. In his autobiography, he wrote, "...when I paid a social call, the presence of half a dozen or more people would strike me dumb...It was impossible for me to speak impromptu. I hesitated whenever I had to face strange audiences and avoided making a speech whenever I could. Even today I do not think I could or would even be inclined to keep a meeting of friends engaged in idle talk."

I found this extremely comforting. If a man, who has become a world icon, who spoke in front of millions, who accomplished what Gandhi did, struggled the same as me - what did that say about what I could do?

Further on in the autobiography he wrote, "I must say that, beyond occasionally exposing me to laughter, my constitutional shyness has been no disadvantage whatsoever. In fact I can see that, on the contrary, it has been all to my advantage. My hesitancy in speech, which was once an annoyance, is now a pleasure. Its greatest benefit has been that it has taught me the economy of words...a thoughtless word hardly ever escapes my tongue or pen. I do not recollect ever having had to regret anything in my speech or writing. I have thus been spared many a mishap and waste of time...A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word."

Whenever I catch myself beating myself up over my awkwardness of speech, having a "Damn, I should have said...." moment, I think of this. I remember that I don't have to take back words I don't say. Although it's uncomfortable, frustrating, and makes me feel different than the rest of the world, I take comfort. If Gandhi felt that hesitancy of speech and constitutional shyness was "no disadvantage whatsoever" in his life, how can it possibly be in mine? If he could accomplish what he did while having these issues, what excuse do I have to let it hold me back?

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