Yay! Speech 10 is over and I've got a shiny certificate and commemorative pin from Toastmasters declaring that I'm a Competent Communicator. Whew. It's so nice to be competent at something. The guest event I dreaded so much went well. We had 10 guests and free lunch. I was presented not only with my Competent Communicator pin but also a fancy certificate for winning our club speech contest back in February.
As for the speech, I ended up with three or four half-hearted drafts. Of the ten speeches I've done, this was the hardest to write. The previous drafts followed the typical commencement/motivational speech format that I gleaned from watching a bunch of commencement speeches on Youtube from famous people like Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs, J.K. Rowling and Obama. As I tried to fill out the format, picking the concepts I wanted to talk about it and fleshing them out, I realized I was bored. I still liked the concepts I picked out, but for some reason I wasn't compelled to deliver the speech I had written. And if I'm not interested in what I'm saying, then I can't possibly expect anyone else to be interested in listening.
In such a time of distress, I turned to whimsy. Once I aimed for whimsy, the words flew out of my pen faster than I could legibly write. I wrote a story with the same title as this blog post. I learned that having to deliver a story within 10 minutes forces me into a very spare economy of words. It's always a useful writing skill to practice and one that I don't always do so rigorously. I found out that memorizing a story is far easier my regular three point speech. Because the plot naturally leads from one event to the next, it only took me two tries to fully deliver the speech without having to refer to notes. Strangely enough, I had more trouble memorizing the song lyrics I used than the entirety of the rest of the speech. It's also much easier to endure dramatic pauses during the delivery when they're built into the narrative. At any rate, I'm glad to be on the other side of that speech. I'm looking forward to taking a break from speechifying for a little while. Oh yeah, read more to get the speech as prepared.
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The first thing that came to mind when I thought about writing an inspirational speech was to take stock of speeches that could be inspirational: sermons, commencement speeches, motivational speeches, halftime locker room talks. I don’t know the first thing about giving those kinds of speeches. But I do know a tiny bit about stories. I write fiction primarily for my own amusement. This is a story I wrote this past weekend hopefully for your amusement, if not inspiration.
Once upon a time, there was a chipmunk named Sonja. Sonja was on the verge of fulfilling her life's dream of becoming the youngest champion in the Worldwide Treetop Wrestling Federation's most elite competition, the Pinnacle Cup Challenge. She had been training for the last six years since the Pinnacle Cup Challenge was last held. Her every waking moment was either thinking, eating, drinking, or moving to conquer the rigors of the sport. She hadn’t lost a single match or competition since that fateful day six years ago when her older sister tragically won the Pinnacle Cup Challenge only to be struck by lighting in her moment of triumph. She was determined to give her parents and the memory of her sister, the champion she felt they deserved.
As her final match started, she threw the entirety of her skills, strategy and ability against her formidable opponent. The battle up the tree was fierce as they clashed and collided, trying to drag the other down. She was blind to anything else but the task at hand until she saw the prize acorn at the top of the tree. In one final lunge, she reached out her paw to claim her victory. But to her horror, it was another paw, not her own, that snagged it. The unthinkable had happened. She had lost.
Sonja didn't know how she got through the next few days, the endless parade of awkward reassurances and sheepish smiles meant to assuage her pain. She retreated from the world, from her family and friends and sought solace at a fermented fruit bar on the seedy side of the forest where no one recognized her.
After months of seething solitude, she was annoyed to find one day that some old chipmunk was claiming the seat beside her.
“Go away, old ‘munk,” she croaked irritably, barely glancing up. “Can't you see there's plenty of seats not near me?”
He chuckled and claimed the seat anyway, “I can't see anything at all, young one. But since I'm already seated, I think I'll just stay here.” He made a great show of settling himself in the chair, during which Sonja had decided scoot one more chair over, when he interrupted her, “Seems you’ve got a burr in your tail you need to get out before it festers.”
“That’s none of your business old ‘munk,” she snapped and defiantly sat back down. “You wouldn’t understand anyway.”
“And that's because I'm old and blind and never been young like you?”
“No, that's because you were never destined to be a champion only to commit the biggest failure ever on the biggest stage of your life. All my hard work wasted! I failed my parents, I failed my sister, I failed all those people who expected me to win! Now I'm nothing! That was all I ever knew and all I ever could be and it's all gone!” She became acutely aware of the silence in the bar after her outburst as every chipmunk in the room held their collective breaths.
“So?” He shrugged. “You’re still alive aren't you?”
His deliberate indifference to her plight infuriated her. She lunged towards him. “Maybe I should be dead! I wouldn't have to deal with you or anyone else expecting anything from me anymore.” She took a deep breath to continue but he interrupted her.
“That's not what I meant. You’re still alive. You have survived the biggest mistake of your life. You have a chance to do something now. You can choose to stay here, wallow in what's already happened and never move on. Or you could pick yourself up, learn from it and do something that moves you forward again.”
With a frustrated cry, Sonja hurled herself out of the door, not caring who got in her way and ran.
She raged as she ran, seeking to outrun his words and her own despair. She scrabbled and dodged through the tree trunks and branches but still those thoughts were there, images of her sister’s face in triumph, her parents’ disappointed looks. It was only in exhaustion that she stopped, her lungs fighting for air. Many long moments later, when her sobbing had subsided, she took one long clean breath, her chest unconstricted, unrestrained. It felt like relief. It felt like freedom. It was then that she realized that the old chipmunk was right. Her entire world had blown up in one huge, irretrievable mistake and she lived to tell the tale. She took another deep breath and imagined a brighter cast to her future. In her mind's eye, she saw what she imagined as pain and disappointment in her parents’ eyes and transformed it into love and concern. A song came to her mind then, written by her friend Jonathan Coulton:
“Enjoy yourself, do the things that matter
Cause there isn’t time and space to do it all
Love the things you try, drink a cocktail wear a tie
Show a little grace if you should fall
Don’t live another day unless you make it count
There’s someone else that you’re supposed to be
There’s something deep inside of you that still wants out
And shame on you if you don’t set it free. “
For the first time in months, a genuine smile crept onto her face as she looked to find her way home. She was looking forward to meeting that other person she was supposed to be.
The moral of the story is, whether you’ve just lost the treetop wrestling championship or you’ve lost something bigger, don't be afraid of mistakes. You can learn so much more about your own strengths and capabilities with failure than with any success.
The End.
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