Tonight, I walked into a Spanish-English bilingual Toastmasters meeting for the first time. I walked out with a blue ribbon for Best Table Topics Speaker and something far more valuable than an award.
I walked out with a reminder of who I am.
My father passed away recently, and I've been navigating some complicated feelings about our relationship. Grief has a way of bringing old wounds to the surface, including things we thought we'd worked through years ago.
My father and I were very different people. He never really understood my fascination with languages, my curiosity about other cultures, or the unconventional path my life took. For much of my life, I struggled to reconcile who I was with who I thought he wanted me to be.
And lately, I've been realizing just how much those struggles affected my sense of self.
On my way to Toastmasters tonight, I received a hurtful message from my stepmother. Among other things, she told me I was nothing like my father.
She's right.
I'm not.
But perhaps being different from my father isn't something I need to explain, justify, or overcome.
Maybe it's something I can embrace.
I arrived at Broward Bilingual Toastmasters Club hoping to practice public speaking, use my Spanish, and meet some interesting people. I certainly wasn't expecting the evening to become part of my healing process.
One of the activities was Table Topics, where participants are given a question and asked to speak without preparation.
My question was something like, "If you could speak with anyone from history who is no longer living, who would you choose, and what would you talk about?"
I couldn't think of anybody.
Seriously. My mind went blank.
Then I looked around the room. Here I was, surrounded by people who shared an interest in language, communication, and personal development. Many were bilingual, practicing their less dominant language. And I myself was about to deliver a two-minute extemporaneous speech in Spanish, a language I hadn't lectured in since I taught at Miami Dade College more than 15 years ago.
Suddenly, as I looked out at the crowd of unfamiliar faces laced with curious expressions, of new friends waiting to hear what I was going to say - and in which language I was going to say it - William Shakespeare popped into mind.
Now, I'm not particularly a Shakespeare enthusiast. But as a writer, I understand that every story we share with the world has another story behind it.
There are experiences, relationships, disappointments, and discoveries that shape what eventually appears on the page. Sometimes the most interesting story is the one the audience never hears.
So I said I'd want to sit down with Shakespeare and ask him about the stories behind his stories.
What inspired him? What personal experiences influenced his characters? What was happening in his life when he wrote those plays?
I just started talking.
No script. No preparation. I simply connected my own experience as a writer with something I thought might resonate with the people in the room.
Apparently, it worked.
At the end of the evening, I received the award for Best Table Topics Speaker!
But the evening wasn't over.
Afterward, I struck up a conversation with Steve, one of the club's founders, who speaks several languages. Before I knew it, we were speaking French!
I was genuinely surprised by how much I understood. We even discussed an opportunity to participate in an online French-speaking Toastmasters activity.
I also convinced a few people to join me in recording a little Portuguese video saying good night to my Brazilian followers.
There I was, moving between English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese, connecting with people, laughing, and enjoying myself.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, something important happened.
I remembered who I am.
The very qualities that sometimes made me feel misunderstood within my own family were the qualities that allowed me to connect with people tonight.
My love of languages. My curiosity about the world. My interest in people's stories. My willingness to walk into an unfamiliar room and strike up a conversation.
Those aren't shortcomings. They're strengths.
I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a man of merit. For me, it isn't about perfection, collecting awards, or proving anything to anybody.
It's about learning, healing, and growing.
Sometimes that means developing new skills. Sometimes it means challenging old assumptions about ourselves. And sometimes it means recognizing that the judgments we've carried for years never really belonged to us.
There's something wonderfully ironic about tonight's Table Topics question.
I chose Shakespeare because I wanted to know the stories behind his stories.
But the story behind my own little speech turned out to be far more meaningful than I could have imagined.
On the surface, it was about a man attending his first Toastmasters meeting and unexpectedly winning an award.
Behind the scenes, it was about a man grieving his father, confronting old wounds, and rediscovering his confidence.
I'm 55 years old, and I certainly don't have everything figured out.
But I'm learning that I don't have to.
Tonight, I earned a blue ribbon.
More importantly, I walked out knowing that I had shown up as myself.
And that was more than enough.
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