Thank you Madam Toastmaster.
Fellow toastmasters. Welcomed Guests. Dear friends.
The movie portrays the life of Guido and Giosuè, an Italian Jew and his son, in a concentration camp during World War II. Now, if you have not seen this movie, you must be thinking how can living in the concentration camp be anything close to beautiful? If you have seen the movie and don’t remember, you probably are wondering “why was that movie called Life is Beautiful again?” Ladies and gentleman, in the next few minutes I wish to answer these questions by first sharing with you a little bit about my life, then propose to you, life can be exceedingly beautiful even in the least hopeful settings.
My father. He was an abusive man. Before I go on any further, please do understand he dearly loved me and the rest of my family, and I love him very much so. I cannot condone what he did to me as a father or as a person, but I also understand the frustration and pain he suffered as he grew up in postwar Korea with an abusive father himself. In that light, I feel that he had done his best and would like you to know that I have relieved him of any guilt as far as our relationship is concerned.
I mention this about my father and the abuse because it was the biggest stumbling block of my life. I felt that the world was a sick, sad place for a father to beat his child. There was a period of my life when I had nightmares of violent fights with my father. I often woke up from these recurring nightmares in the middle of the night and became very scared of falling asleep. At times I found solace in alcohol-induced stupor in mornings after those long, sleepless nights. I am finally coming to understand that my experiences are very similar to what physicians describe as post-traumatic stress disorder in psychiatry.
I tried whatever I can to forget about these things and move on with my life. Finish undergrad, find a job, find love, have kids and live happily ever after. It took me two years of what people call “soul-searching” to find peace. There was a lot of introspection and remembering the stories my father told me about his childhood. I remembered he would often tell me how he could not go to school because his father made him work in the field. How he was always hungry. How he loved to eat grasshoppers because it was the closest thing to any kind of meat he could eat. He found the most satisfaction in buying us food so my brothers and I could stuff our fat faces! In the end, I realized that he did the best that a father could do as an abused child himself. To that extent I give him credit for trying his best. Realizing this, the world was not such a bad place anymore. I felt that I did not have to live my life as my father did. More importantly, I felt that I had the choice not to live as he did.
When I was just beginning to see the world in a different light, the Indian Ocean tsunami had struck various parts of South Asia. This time, instead of despairing about this world, I joined a friend to volunteer in a small fishing town in India where several villages had been devastated by the disaster. We worked on many different projects, but the activity I enjoyed the most was playing with the orphaned children there. I was sad for those children – not all whose parents were lost to the water but to diseases. Every morning, we woke up at the urging of the Indian sun and went to work doing whatever the day asked us to do. It purified my soul to have the simple daily objective of helping others. It was such a wonderful period of my life. Naturally, it was heart wrenching for me to leave India and the people behind.
Since that trip, I had kept my head shaven as you see me now in remembrance of the little boys and girls whose heads were shaven when their parents had passed away. I also threw out my bed because I felt that I should sleep on the floor just like my friends did in India. Also, I traveled to New Orleans, Haiti, and Guatemala to volunteer. These trips reinforced my idea that life is not so sad or meaningless and that I am able to make this world a little better. I found myself worthy of life for the first time.
To this date I still do not have a bed to myself. However, I have recently been diagnosed with a sleep condition. My neurologist pleaded me to sleep on a bed because comfortable sleep is especially important with my condition. I am not totally convinced yet, but I may be getting a bed for myself soon. I pray that the children do not think I am a sellout. I hope I stay the course and become a savior of children - not for my own ego but for the resilient children who still found a way to smile.
In Life is Beautiful, the father tries hard to protect his son’s innocence even through the hardships of living in a concentration camp. Beauty is not defined by the surrounding conditions - be it good or bad. Indeed, the world can be a very depraved place for a lot of people. Just like the father in the story, I feel that I can make this life a little more beautiful if I worked to protect the lives and innocence of people who live in worse conditions than I do.
True beauty is found when we look into each others’ eyes and realize that our basic desires and needs are very much the same. When we share what we have and who we are, we finally find beauty that transcends good and evil. This is my outlook on life now. I cannot deny that my upbringing was not ideal. I also recognize that there are many man, women and children dying of hunger, famine, curable diseases, and war. Despite this, I hold a positive outlook on life because I now know that today I am doing what I can to help these people. Ladies and gentlemen, I humbly submit to you, in spite of what is going on in our world and in our lives, Life is beautiful.
-Wilbur
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