As any engaged member of Toastmasters would do, I made sure to catch the finalist speeches from the 2022 International Convention as held last weekend. The champion was Cyril Junior Dim, from District 108, with his speech “Ndini.”
In his speech, he talked about how his birth name, near-unpronounceable to Western ears, had been an embarrassment to him as a child. He denied the name, even changed it as soon as he was able. But he introduced a concept to us, one that he was raised with and had only now come to embrace: Ndini, meaning This is Me.
My initial reaction was, what does his name matter? I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, a veritable melting pot of almost every ethnicity you could imagine, along with the confused jumbles of names I had become accustomed to. Yet another ethnic name shouldn’t be that embarrassing, right?
But I quickly realized, I have many seemingly trivial characteristics that I’m embarrassed about. In terms of a name, I have it lucky: my name, though uncommon, is easy to pronounce. But I’m very self-conscious about other things: my weight, my freckles, my messy hair. When I confide in my boyfriend these insecurities, he’s always taken aback: why should I be so self-conscious about something so trivial?
As Dim in his speech cites, “What God has given, no man can take away.” Religious or not, I can hear a ring of wisdom in that. Human standards are vague and arbitrary. We are told many things are unacceptable or acceptable based on, well, what people are thinking at the time, which may in turn be influenced by others. People project their insecurities onto others or onto themselves in a messy attempt to justify their own place in the world.
Growing up, I was denied many things I was taught were wrong. It was a very messed-up childhood. I had to conform, to the extent of ignoring my needs, else risk beatings and my mother’s screaming wrath. I hid in the back of closets, behind locked bathroom doors, and in novels frequently taken away from me.
To this day, I’m taking steps to unlearn all these things I was taught. My friends, that is why I’m here. This is me. This is us. We come to Toastmasters for very many reasons. We have our own stories. We’re here to change our own lives. We learn to speak, to listen, to engage others around us, to express ourselves. Despite our different stories, we’re not so different in how we respond to each other. We all want similar things in life.
That is the purpose of this blog. We’re not constrained to practicing with each other for an hour and a half every Monday evening. This is a life journey for us, above and beyond our next Pathways project.
Here, we share our thoughts, our journeys, our struggles. Here, we learn.
Welcome to Milpitas Toastmasters. This is us.
-Valerie
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