From a Rainy Saturday Morning to Unforgettable Shared Moments

I just had some unforgettable moments, shared with my fellow Toastmasters during our biweekly meeting today.

As usual, I left my home in Chungho before eight o'clock, riding a Ubike to our meeting venue in Sanchong (bordering Luchou, about 12 kilometers from my home). All of a sudden, it started raining, so I had to return the Ubike midway and switch to the MRT to reach the meeting venue.

We had an interesting meeting theme today about the arts, and I was assigned the task of hosting the Table Topic session where participants can practice delivering impromptu speeches. I was excited about it, but it rained so hard that I wondered how many people would show up on this rainy, early Saturday morning.

You know what? As it turned out, we had a full room of participants joining the event, the most as I can remember recently, including both the guests and our fellow Toastmasters. 

It's my instinctive belief that "those who regularly get up early on Saturday morning are extraordinary people", in the sense that they are willing to give up the comfort of bed, and devote their priceless weekend morning hours for personal growth. That's the main reason why I chose to join Sandwich, the Toastmasters club meeting on the first and third Saturday morning of the month. I was aware that I had a similar mindset and wanted to be surrounded by people like them. 

To this end, I suddenly realized that "having more participants on a heavily rainy Saturday morning" was not a surprise really in the sense that the participants are extraordinary somehow, and their plan will not be deterred simply because of heavy rain, unlike ordinary people who may be affected.

In answering the first theme question of our meeting today, "Which art is your favorite?", off the top of my head I wrote down "English literature", having just studied five Shakespeare’s plays and Tolkien's  masterpiece trilogy The Lord of the Rings. As I reflected deeper, I found I used to love most, if not all, of the arts by conventional categories, be it visual (like painting), performing (like music) and literary (like poetry). As time goes by, now in my mid-60s I prefer something more static and thought-provoking, like classic works of world literature. I'm not sure, though, if such a change is part of my aging process or continued growth (for I didn't dare to try my self-study of Shakespeare’s plays until four months ago), or both?

As to the second question, "Can you think of any new form of arts that should be recognized today?", my answer is a resounding yes because being alive itself is already an art, in one form or another, though I don't know what exactly it should be called.

To proceed with my session, I prepared six questions, but I did not control time well ( as always) and managed to have only five participants answer the questions, each with an impromptu speech lasting anywhere between one and two minutes. I enjoyed hosting the session, and hope that all participants benefited from it as well.

After the meeting, we moved to a place nearby to have our group lunch, as usual, with our like-minded friends, new and old, of different backgrounds and generations, all mingling together in an atmosphere of warmth, openness, connectedness, and, not least, authenticity that can hardly be found on social occasions elsewhere.

What a day! An otherwise grim, rainy Saturday morning will be remembered as unforgettable shared moments with like-minded friends. I look forward to our next meeting, regardless of whether the day brings rain or sunshine.