Toastmasters Dynamic Leadership Speech #4 – “The Dash We Get to Write”

The purpose of this project is for the speaker to practice using vocal variety or body language to enhance a speech.

Madam Toastmaster, fellow Toastmasters, and honored guests,

This past week, someone I knew, someone vibrant, loved, and woven into the fabric of my hometown community, passed away unexpectedly.

No warning.
No slow decline.
No time to prepare.

Just… gone.

When news like that hits, it doesn’t stay contained.
It ripples through friends, through families, through people who may not have seen them in years but suddenly feel the loss as if it were yesterday.

Grief travels fast.
And it has a strange way of waking us up.

When someone passes unexpectedly, there is this moment of strange, suspended silence where you think:

“How is the world still turning?
How is traffic still flowing?
How are people still posting about lunch on Facebook?”

Because inside yours or a loved one’s chest, everything has stopped.

In that stillness, one thought rises above the rest:

Life is so unbelievably short.
And none of us know how long we get.

As the community mourned this week, I found myself reading the obituary.

And something stood out – simple, obvious, but something we rarely stop to consider.

Every obituary has two dates.
The day someone entered this world.
And the day they left it.

And between those two dates is a tiny line –
a dash.

Just a dash.

But that little dash represents everything they did:
the lives they touched,
the choices they made,
the mistakes, the triumphs, the laughter, the tears.

That tiny dash holds an entire lifetime.

And it made me ask myself:
What will my dash say?
And by extension –
What will your dash say?

We spend so much of our lives worrying about the wrong things:

• The delayed email
• The opinions of people who don’t matter
• Plans that don’t go perfectly
• The fear of looking foolish
• Or failing
• Or not being “ready”

But when someone dies unexpectedly, all those fears suddenly look ridiculous.

No obituary ever says:
“She kept her inbox at zero.”
“He never embarrassed himself.”
“They always played it safe.”

Obituaries talk about connection.
Kindness.
Courage.
Impact.

They talk about how someone made people feel.

That is the dash.
Not the perfection.
Not the performance.

The impact.

Many of us think impact comes from grand gestures, big achievements, headline-worthy accomplishments but most impact is actually quiet. Subtle. Ordinary.

The check-in text.
The smile to the tired cashier.
Telling people you love that you love them –
not someday,
but NOW.

Showing up, being kind, being honest, being brave enough not to coast through life but to live it intentionally.

Impact is not about being famous.
Impact is about being FELT.

You are building a legacy you don’t even realize you’re building.

The person we lost this week probably didn’t know the size of his ripple effect.
Most people don’t.

We rarely notice how showing up to a game,
staying an extra hour,
calling someone by name – spelling it correctly, even (which is a gift, by the way, lol),
or offering a word of encouragement
lodges itself into someone else’s heart.

We underestimate the weight our presence carries.

But we all leave trails.
Footprints.
Echoes.

The question isn’t whether you’ll make an impact –
you already are, good, bad, or indifferent.

The real question is:
What kind of impact will yours be?

The Dash is already being written.

Someday – far later than today, we hope – someone will sit down to write your obituary.

And someone else will read it.

What do you want it to say?

Not your job title.
Not the fancy car you drove.
Not your follower count on socials.

But the things that matter:

• Who did you help?
• Who did you love?
• Who did you show up for?
• Who feels braver because you were in their life?
• What dreams did you chase?

What are you doing today – right now – with the dash you’ve been given?

Dolly Parton said, “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”

Choose your dash on purpose.

Life is short.
Life is unpredictable.
Life is fragile.

But life is also full –
full of chances to choose differently,
to love deeply,
to speak honestly,
to act boldly,
and to leave people better than we found them.

The dash is small.
But what it represents… is infinite.

So I will ask you again –
not to scare you,
but to wake you:

What will your obituary say?

And what will you choose to do with the precious, unrepeatable dash between your first day and your last?

Because we don’t control the dates.
But we absolutely control the dash.

Thank you.