Division G COT II Opening Address: To Touch Immortality

The following speech was given, on the 09^th January 2021, at District 80 Division G’s Club Officer Training II.  This was the opening address of the programme.  I gave it in my capacity as Director, Division G

District Officers, Club Officers, my fellow Toastmasters, we have gathered here to give substance to our passion, to be effective communicators, to be inspiring leaders, to be better than we were yesterday, better than our last speech, better than who we were.  Not one step back.  That is our Division G motto.  I welcome you, as your Division Director, to our Club Officer Training II. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American philosopher, said, “Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.”  I say you are not here to find that someone to inspire you; you are here to be that someone.  You are here because you understand that we are part of something greater than ourselves.  We are part of that inexorable march of humanity, we are islands of hope in an ocean of dreams.  But dreaming is not enough. 

Toastmasters is about the art of rhetoric.  Rhetoric is the ability to put forward a coherent, cogent argument, for or against a position, to move people.  Toastmasters is about moving hearts.  It is about putting form to feelings.  It is about bringing others on a journey.  And, if, in that time, your words, and your actions, as leaders, as motivators, as Toastmasters, has touched someone, and they remembered, even if for a moment, how you said the right words to make them feel something, then you have touched immortality.  I hope we can all touch immortality.  Over to you, Toastmaster of the Day.