Fellow toastmasters before I begin with my speech I would like to say that whatever it is that I put forward in my speech today is the result of my own personal research. If you were to study this topic you might find a different meaning to life and death. So without any further ado let’s get started.
I’ve watched numerous videos that go like; How to be successful in life, how to be happy in life, how to connect with life, how to live a good life, how not to waste your life and lots more similar questions. Which brought me to the question. What is life? I’ve been asking myself the same question for the past couple of months. What does life actually mean? Do we all have a purpose in life? But what’s the point of achieving them when at the end of the day at some point in life we die? Fellow toastmasters and welcomed guests, good evening. Tonight I will be taking you on an enlightening journey on what I think life and death actually mean.
Every individual describes life in their own terms. I asked a couple of my teachers what life meant to them and one of them said (Change voice)“Mohammad, to me life is about having Faith, falling in Love, Hoping, Sacrificing and Struggling” I asked another one of my teachers and she said (Change voice)“Well Mohammad, I think life is all about happiness. It’s about finding happiness within yourself and others.” I still wasn't convinced as to what life actually was about so I asked another one of my teachers. His answer was a bit more interesting cause it interrelated with my research. He said that (change voice bit slow)“the meaning of life varies between person to person but there is one constant. And that constant is to do one’s best to leave the world a better place than when they entered it” Now that is something I agree with. But I was still not convinced as to what life actually was.
We all have a purpose in life and from time to time our purpose gets reformed. One could say that purpose is like a game. In a game, our goal is to finish every level or to be the best of the best but when a new version of the game comes out then we have another set of levels to finish. This is similar to our purpose in life. When we are young we pursue what we think is our purpose but as we grow up our purpose in life grows with us. A great example is when we marry and have children our purpose grows from being able to achieve our goals to be able to protect our children. Don’t get me wrong I am not married nor did I ever marry. I’m still single but I’m not ready to mingle.
From a young age, we are brainwashed to think that the real meaning behind life is to pursue wealth. To be rich and powerful. In fact, I believed that. If I want to change the world or be able to achieve my dreams I must be rich and powerful. Cause without wealth you cannot do much in life. But I was wrong.
When talking about life one must always consider death. Because if death didn’t exist we wouldn’t bother finding the meaning behind life. We wouldn’t bother pursuing our purpose in life because we would just exist. One of the biggest wonders besides life is death. We don't actually know what lies beyond it. You might disagree with me. Some of you might say well, death is a way for us to leave this world and go to heaven or hell. Others might say when we die and when our body is cremated the soul leaves and joins hell or heaven and after some time the soul will be reborn into this world. I’m sure that there are different beliefs on death but we can’t say that we are 100% sure about what happens after death. We can say that this is what we believe happens after death but we can’t say that we are 100% sure that it is true. At first, I thought of speaking only about life but the reason as to why I chose to talk about death in the first place is because without life there is no death and there would be no value to life if death were to be non-existent.
There is a sentence that I read somewhere that goes like “Life is everything to anything, but a race. Because in a race you run to reach the end, but in life?” Dear friends, through my journey on understanding what life is about I, realised something. Life cannot be understood. Life is that moment you realise you fell in love with your soon to be a soulmate. Life is about the thrill of not knowing what you have in store for the following day. It is knowing that you are nothing close to perfect, yet you wish to improve yourself. Life is about getting to feel your baby in your arms. The things that I mentioned cannot be understood, they can only be felt. Now that I have reached the end of my journey on learning about life and death I would like to conclude my speech by saying Life is not about the finish line nor it is about the start, but it is about the journey from the start to the finish.