At some level, we all knew Louis who joined Vancore this year, was only lent to us.
Today we learned that today’s speech would be his last. He is leaving the club. Because he is leaving the country, to punch his ticket for the next leg of his journey.
There is no official “exit” speech in Toastmasters, so Louis got to set his own parameters: tell your truth, give it everything you’ve got, and beat a quick retreat stage left before everyone dissolves into tears.
Louis’s departure is unsatisfying but his speech was satisfying, in the following way: it resolved the mystery that had been hanging over his time at Vancore.
In his icebreaker, delivered in the spring, Louis revealed himself as a kind of spiritual Argonaut, a man writing his own story of continual self-reinvention.
Think of it as a tale in three frames. This is where he’d come from. This was where he was now. The third frame, the future frame, was left blank.
We now know what that Louis has landed a cool job in Luxembourg that will both stretch him and improve the world a little bit. So it goes. And so he goes.
One of the great things about Toastmasters is that it captures people in dynamic transition. Nobody comes to Toastmasters for no reason. Usually they are at some kind of inflection point.
Maybe they landed a new sales job that demands they sharpen their improvisatory speaking skills.
Or maybe they’ve sold their book and must now promote it – which means cultivating a public persona.
Or maybe they’re getting married, or someone close to them has died, and there is a difficult speech in their near future.
It’s the great privilege of the rest of us, who were here when they arrived and may still be here when they go, to cheer them on.
Vancore Toastmasters is a great place to hone your public speaking skills as you move through your life stages and transitions or you are wanting to inject some momentum into your job or career.
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