I heard Bishop Robert Barron saying something like this: he once saw a teacher, likely an older person, saying that he didn’t prepare his sermon for the day during the past week.
The pupils were shocked – how could you go and hold a speech without being prepared?
The answer came quickly – you don’t prepare your speech one week before it, but your whole life.
Sure, for a speech you can prepare some things, read some documents, experiment with some phrases.
But, all-in-all, you can’t prepare as you would prepare by doing lots of readings, getting used to thinking, being exposed to culture, and, all-in-all, living a full life.
At some point, I was assigned to give a speech to an NGO. I didn’t prepare anything. The speech was considered good, based on the feedback I received.
But even if I didn’t purposely prepare some ideas, I did prepare by generally doing things like reading, going to events, meeting people, and doing NGO-type of activities (volunteering).
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