Courage to Speak

Like I said in an earlier blog post, I have trouble talking to people. I was manning a pro-life club's stand at a student involvement fair alone for a while this morning, and I had like, a billion flyers to hand out to people. However, it's tough to just approach people with a flyer. I think I managed about one out of every ten or so students. I would let the ones that sort of moved as far away from my stand as possible while walking by go on without a pamphlet. Most people that looked me in the eye as they walked by, I felt too sheepish to give them a flyer, I just nodded and said hello. I really only got the people that just flat-out walked up to my stand, or people that looked at the stand but didn't look at me. I felt kind of like I wasn't doing my job well enough because I couldn't approach people. Luckily, I was only there for about 15 minutes out of the 5 hours that students were allowed in (I did all of the pre-student setup though, I'm no slacker).

Later that night, I went to a meeting with a Catholic club I'm in on campus. There were a lot of new faces because they had been advertising at the involvement fair as well. As I walked in, I headed around a crowd of new people talking to the club leaders, and headed for a group of my friends. On the way there though, I had to pass by a new person who was just standing alone watching the other people talk from afar.

As I walked towards him, I debated introducing myself, but I pushed the thought away and kept heading for my friends. Right when I walked past him though, I thought "I could just ignore him and let him be alone, or I could talk to him." Suddenly it seemed like there was an obvious choice, even though it was unpleasant. I turned around and introduced myself to him. His name was Phil.

We started talking, and slowly some of my other friends came over to say hi to me, and I got the chance to introduce them to my new freshman friend, Phil. Soon the boy who had been standing alone watching the small crowds of people had become a part of one of those crowds.

He sat with me and my friends throughout the meeting, and at the end of it, during the pizza and socializing part, he walked up to one of the club leaders and started talking to him. He worked his way back over to us eventually, but I felt like he had a really good time and was a lot more comfortable now.

Waiting in line for pizza, I also found the courage to introduce myself to a freshman named Michael. He left to go to the email sign-up paper, but when he came back and sort of stood awkwardly at the edge of me and my circle of friends, I made sure to try to get him involved in the conversation.

I don't know how important it was that I introduced myself to these people and gave them a chance to talk and be welcomed. They may never come back for another meeting (although I certainly hope that's not the case). The one thing I do know was that I made the right decision in talking to them. It was a good choice.