The following item is a transcript of a speech I gave at a Toastmasters meeting in Melbourne this morning. The speech is the first speech in a series of ten which you deliver as part of the Competent Communicator program. Known as the Icebreaker, the speech is about introducing yourself to the meeting and telling the audience something about your life. Red Karpitz and I have tagged it the Me Monster Hour.
Thanks to Red Karpitz for convincing me to join his merry band of speakers - so far it's been good fun. He also gave an excellent speech (Number Three in the Competent Communicator program) today. "100 Things" was truly inspiring, Red.
Final, big wet sloppy thanks to my other half Muddy Karpitz for being a perfect audience of one. Your insights, comments and suggestions for improvements (on content and presentation) were perfect.
Muddy, the "Best Speaker" ribbon is yours too.
Toastmaster, fellow Toastmasters and esteemed guests, my attitude to turning 40 was a source of both amusement and confusion for my loved ones. I mean, I was counting down the days to 28 of May 2011 the way a child counts the days to Christmas, or a militant vegan counts the hours to their next Fair-trade soy latte.
I. Could. Not. Wait.
For my husband, turning 40 was a trauma to be simultaneously ignored, endured, bypassed and swallowed like the foulest medicine. For my friends, turning 40 meant handbag-dancing to Spandau Ballet on a Friday night was no longer an option - unless we were doing it in each other's lounge-rooms and the volume was low enough to not wake the children.
For my mother and my father, and my two elder sisters, the youngest member of the family turning 40 meant they were now closer to death than ever - not that they're melodramatic or anything...Needless to say, I was not only taking it better than everyone else, I was relishing it.
I baked cinnamon teacake and lemon poppy-seed slice for my workmates. My more effervescent colleagues led the team in a rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday". People bought me endless rounds of sodas and limes that night. A colleague made me a bouquet of coloured balloons which I carried home on the tram.
Mind you, it's Friday at this point, and my birthday isn't until Saturday, so the fun is just beginning...
On that morning my husband wakes me with candle-lit red velvet cupcakes and orange tulips wrapped in crispy layers of tissue and cellophane, a cup of tea on a tray and another rendition of "Happy Birthday" - Marilyn Monroe style…
My phone pings with messages throughout the day, the voicemails are piling up and I'm feeling pretty good. Sunday is posh high tea at Langham's Hotel with my husband and my four closest girlfriends and Monday is movie night at the Nova – a Trotters Restaurant house-burger and side-trip to Readings follows.
Bad, cheap presents are received from well-meaning friends while cold hard birthday cash from my more pragmatic family stuffs my pockets. The birthday week morphs into a birthday fortnight, a birthday month, and working in bank of course, a birthday quarter…...Whilst I’m waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop. I mean, surely this is the start of my mid-life crisis? Mmmm...
The gym membership is paying off. I’m fitter than I’ve been in a decade. Clothes that once depressed me with their tight waistbands are starting to feel comfortable again, and buying new ones doesn’t feel quite so traumatic – in fact, it’s a lot of fun. I am sleeping fewer hours yet feeling more refreshed. I am working longer hours but feeling more enthusiastic about my output. I have shed toxic family members and friends – my thumb crazily working the delete button on my mobile phone address book – whilst making new friends and stimulating acquaintances amongst my younger work colleagues.
Beginner German lessons at the Lyceum. Beekeeping. Street Latin dance classes at Forever Dance studio. Live shows at the Athenaeum. Affordable hairstyling services.
So, again, I ask the question: where’s my crisis? Here I am, six months after turning 40, and I’m waiting for the melancholia, anger and despair to kick in.
And then it dawns on me. My moment of clarity: this is the crisis...
What is joining a gym and doing three spin classes a week if not a morbid, panicked attempt to stave off the deterioration of a middle-aged body in decline?
What is excessive clothes-shopping and adornment if not a desperate attempt to prolong the twilight of one’s diminishing erotic capital?
Sleeping fewer hours? Why surely that’s about making every precious waking moment count, because, let’s face it, with each day and night that passes, I’m just getting closer to death.
Language lessons? Beekeeping? Dancing? Why that’s just preventing dementia by firing up dormant neural pathways because with each day and night that passes, I’m just getting closer to drooling in a bathchair.
Working harder? That superannuation isn’t going to top itself up.
Shedding friends and family? Well that’s just plain old middle-aged crankiness.
So you see, ladies and gentlemen, the very question, "mid-life crisis or mid-life rebirth" is all wrong. Crisis and re-birth are not mutually exclusive. They are so obviously the flipside of each other, I can only think dementia has caught up with me for not making the connection sooner.
But does that mean I am melancholic, angry or despairing? Of course not. I am just a little more self-aware than I was three months ago. But with a killer wardrobe and some extra-flammable neurons.
Vielen Dank für Ihre Aufmerksamkeit.
(Thank you for listening).
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