We talk constantly. We speak to our spouses when we wake up, to our children when we try to get them up, to our friends on the way to work, to the person preparing our morning bagel, and on and on. Most of that speech is automatic.

“Hey, how are you doing?”
“Great, you?”
“Can’t complain. I mean, I could complain but who’d listen?”

When we’re not talking, we often hear an internal dialogue.

“Why didn’t you demand a raise?”
“Next time, next time.”
“You’re always saying that. This is next time.”
“Hey, stop yelling at me!”

Words are as natural most of the time as the steps we take on the way to or from the car, down the block, or up the stairs. We don’t think, “Left, right, left, right.” Wait, no, isn’t it, “Right, left, left, right, right?”

And yet, something happens to the natural flow of words when we have to give a speech. It’s not the same for everyone. I suspect many politicians are so comfortable giving speeches that they just need to know where the camera is to share their eloquence.

That’s not exactly the word I’d use to describe the times I’ve had to speak in front of large, or even medium-sized groups. I’ve spoken out in meetings many times about stories, offering my opinion or awareness of the history of an evolving story to a group of editors.

I’m fine in those situations. It’s when I get up in front of a group of people, many of whom I don’t know, to share some words on a subject that the discomfort begins.

I lick my lips regularly before I begin, as the saliva that pours forth from my mouth so readily at other times has decided that this moment is the ideal time to take a vacation.

My breathing becomes shallow and quick. “I, uh, would, uh, like to, uh, say a few words.”

Speeches are like walking on the bottom of the ocean, wearing heavy boots and breathing through a small tube. Suddenly, the words become like unknown and unseen obstacles, blocking the path to communicating something charming, witty, insightful and cohesive.

“Uh, hi, I’m, uh, uh, Dan, right, Dan.”

Why do those public words become so unfamiliar and uncomfortable? Is it because we can’t correct them? Do we feel as if we need to perform the words instead of just sharing what’s percolating in our minds at the time?

In the middle of a speech, we can’t say, “Where was I? Oh, yes, that’s it. I could really use a tuna sandwich right now.”

I recently gave a short speech in front of a group celebrating my brother’s birthday. I didn’t know many of the people in the room and even though it was a receptive audience, I started to feel the typical nerves building up in those last few moments.

The speech went fine, or so people have assured me. But then, of course, the voices in my head shared their customary public-speech criticism.

I became like all those pundits who second guess every word and decision after an election or after the big game. “You know,” I thought to myself, “you should have started with this joke. That would have been funnier.”

“Oh yeah?” I wanted to bark back at that self-critical voice. “Where were you 10 minutes ago?”

“I was here, you just couldn’t hear me because too many other voices were up here, shouting into your ear not to mess up.”

Yet it always seems to turn out all right. Until the next time.

We go so far even when we don’t seem to go anywhere. Our daughter’s jazz band played the same repertoire for the last few months, with the same solos, the same black pants for most of the group and the same introduction to the numbers from an incredibly positive and energetic conductor.

The first time they played compositions such as “Take the ‘A’ Train,” written by Billy Strayhorn and made famous by Duke Ellington, they sounded as if they were trying on clothing that didn’t exactly fit. They had their moments when they played together and some of the solos filled the room with the kind of spontaneous, live performance sounds you can’t soak in even with the finest video recording devices.

The group also had a few unsteady and discordant sounds. The problem with playing arrangements people in the audience know is that they recognize when the note isn’t exactly right, and they react when the entrance is too early or too late in a transitional phrase.

The audience wanted to let the music wash over them the first time they heard it, but they were like passengers on an airplane that ran into turbulence. They smiled through it, willing their sons and daughters to cleaner phrases, better sounds and a uniform performance.

A few weeks later, the group played the same music again and, ever so slightly, they improved. One of the players seemed to own the first few measures of her solo, turning several heads toward the stage as she directed her sound squarely into a microphone.

At the end of that performance, the applause seemed bigger — and so did the musicians.

Time after time, this group came together, working its way from guessing at notes to hitting them with the same energy as a “Jeopardy!” contestant who can barely wait to win money.

Recently, the jazz band had its final concert. Most of the players, who had performed together for close to two years, would be disbanding as they went off to high school. Yes, they will likely play some music again together, but the combination of two middle schools meant this was the last time these people would share music with their parents, families and community members.

Something about this final night felt different, even as they sauntered to their seats. Gone were the unsteady footsteps and the anxious looks.

The conductor, whose smile hadn’t changed from the first performance, snapped his fingers to the jazz rhythms — in contrast to classical music, where a baton is used. The group nailed that final concert, with each solo better than the one before and each chord coming together the way the composer intended. Could it have been better? Sure, and it will be better in high school and beyond. On this night, though, when the musicians put their instruments back in their cases and prepared to walk their individual paths, they shared everything they had on the stage with their appreciative audience.

The conductor took a moment, toward the end of the performance, to thank the musicians and the audience for sharing the three years of middle school with him. He commented on the changes he’d seen in them as people and as musicians, watching them enter when they were 11 from primary school and exit to high school as 13- and 14-year-olds.

As these young students consider the uncertainty of high school, with moments when school, music, sports and friends suddenly seem filled with awkward tension, they can reflect on the musical journey they’d taken and the music they conquered together.

A boys’ baseball team I coached recently lost a game in such an excruciating fashion that I couldn’t rely on all the standby coach catchphrases.

“We’ll get ’em next time,” would fall flat, especially when we had them for the taking. We were up by two runs and were in complete control of the game until the final outs.

“Hey, this one’s on me.” That’s nice and can work in deflecting any possible blame, but the kids generally don’t buy into it. If they believe it, it also sets a dangerous precedent for future losses.

“Hey, coach,” they might ask at the end of another game. “This one’s clearly not on you, right? Isn’t it Johnny’s fault?”

Those final three outs never happened. What made the game even more difficult to swallow was that the other team didn’t put a single ball in play in their final at bat. Four walks, a hit batter and a few wild pitches later, we were done.

We trudged to left field for the postgame analysis and pep talk.

“Hey,” I said. “Look, uh, this is one game, right?”

I could see it in their eyes: “Weak and feeble, coach. You’re going to have to do better than that.”

“You know, we did a lot right this game.”

“Who cares,” their sullen, downcast eyes indicated.

“We lost.”

“OK, well, we can’t win them all.”

I didn’t even need to look at them to know what they were thinking. I was thinking it, too, as the words came dribbling out of my mouth. “Seriously? You’re going with that?”

“Boys, I know you all did your best.”

Their eyes moved to their parents, as if they were saying telepathically: “Get me out of here, I want to go home.”

“Hey,” I said, a small smirk on my face. “Guys, who saw Joey’s slide at second today? Was that the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen?”

Joey had wandered too far from second and would have been out if the pitcher had thrown the ball to the second baseman. When the second baseman had to move a few feet from the base, Joey dove back head first and landed flat on his chest, a yard short of the base. He crawled on his hands and knees across the dirt to the base, arriving just in time to beat the second baseman’s tag.

“That was funny,” several of them seemed to say. Joey, you see, is a bit sensitive so that comment could have been dangerous. Even he, however, offered a small smile. It was an absurd moment to savor. And, fortunately for us, he was safe, so laughing about it was probably safe.

In that final, fateful, painful inning, the first pitcher walked two and hit a batter, sending the tying run to second and the winning run to first. I brought in a tall relief pitcher who promptly walked another two batters. A wild pitch later, the game was over.

“Fred, do you know why I put you in there at the end of the game?” I asked.

“Because you believed in me?” he offered hopefully.

“Well, sure, but the real reason is that you’re much taller than me.”

Again, I was reaching for the absurd. No one looked at their parents.

“Yeah, you see, it’s not right for a 12-year-old boy to be taller than his coach. I needed to cut you down to size.”

The grin spread quickly across his face, as well as those of the other four boys who look down on me.

No, it wasn’t in the playbook, but it worked.

Where do we get the “Oh, right, I get it,” moments? We’re so close to ourselves and our lives that those moments are often hard to see. It’s like in the movies, where someone has a close friend: Lo and behold, that friend turns into something much more, once personal introspection is abandoned and it is realized how important such a friendship is deep down.

Beyond the romantic comedies, however, we can turn to dramas, action films or other forms of entertainment for a broader awareness of ourselves and our lives.

Let’s say we’re driving on the Long Island Expressway and somebody cuts us off. What do we do? Well, if we’ve got kids in the car, we might grind our teeth, hold on tight to the steering wheel and fight the urge to say things that would look something like “$#$#@%$!!!” in a cartoon.

But what did that person make us do? Did we have to hit the brake a bit when we’re on the way to a soccer game? Did she interrupt our train of thought when we were about to cure cancer, come up with a solution for tension in the Middle East, or figure out a way to reduce fossil fuel emissions from the thousands of planes that soar overhead?

Is it possible that she was racing home from work to take care of a kid with a stuffy nose, to hear someone’s first violin concert or congratulate her son for earning his first A in social studies?

Yes, most of the time we’re, thankfully, stuck in the world of the small stuff. If we’re fortunate enough, we’re not worried every moment about taking care of basic needs. I know people have told us many times not to sweat the small stuff and they’ve even urged us to understand that it’s all small stuff. The problem is that we’ve become accustomed to a world in which everything is available to us right now and in which we don’t want to wait for anything or anyone.

How’s all that extra time working out for us? Are we all enjoying the chance to spend more quality time with each other? We seem to have freed up our time so that we can disconnect with the people around us, staying plugged in to a virtual world devoid of awkward silences, driven by words that pour out of our fingers instead of our mouths. We don’t have to comb our hair or check our teeth to send someone a funny text with a little premade goofy face.

This isn’t a diatribe against electronics. I enjoy the instant gratification of knowing something that comes from ubiquitous Internet access.

In movies like “American Beauty,” we see Kevin Spacey “get it” a bit too late. He doesn’t see the wonder of his life, his wife and his daughter until he can’t appreciate or show it.

In real life, even people with jobs they dreamt about often get so caught up in what they’re doing that they seem to miss “it.” Of course, when these small, unflattering moments occur for our fame-generated celebrities, eager members of the paparazzi capture them “losing it.”

It’d be difficult to smell the flowers, become energized and inspired by a child’s question, or pause to appreciate a shifting wind all the time. We wouldn’t get much done and, I suspect, might miss a bill, deadline, meeting or two.

But, wouldn’t it be nice if those “Oh, right, I get it,” moments came more often, giving us the ability to appreciate the unseen air we breathe and the world of infinite possibilities that awaits around the corner?