Toastmasters. Project 2. Organise your speech
Ранее.
Вторая речь в Toastmasters.
Click to viewAWE.Today it is a special day, all about feelings and emotions, so I will speak of something alike. Of AWE. This feeling is very close to admiration and respect, but not exactly the same.
Firstly, what is admiration? Personally I admire a person for exceptionally courageous, altruistic, humane, strong-willed or wise behavior. For example, I admire Nelson Mandela for not giving up his policy even at the threat of decades in prison. I admire Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King for their struggle against injustice despite the mortal danger. I admire Marie Curie and Coco Chanel for having proved that a woman can just as well revolutionize the world. In case of all these icons I can understand, of course roughly, their reasons and implications. I can imagine that in exceptional circumstances I would behave in a similar way or at least, if I had their remarkable talents and qualities , their strong will, courage, intelligence and intuition, I would do so.
As for AWE, my AWE comes from great admiration combined with perplexity. And shock. And sometimes fear. The latter three arise because I cannot possibly understand the person’s motivation. I cannot possibly imagine myself in their place. Or I don not want to, because I cannot bear the fear of the thought. AWE appears beyond all understanding and imagination.
A few examples, quite different from each other.
The only person I personally knew and was awed by was my friend Anna. That was a moderate, domestic sort of AWE, but still was it. We used to be flatmates and close friends, spend lots of time together, talk and talk, you know. And I always felt she was a step ahead. In her ideas, in her judgements, in her attitudes, in her images, in music she listened to and in films she watched. I have caught up with some of them by now. Others are still beyond. For example, she once said that mankind had done so many dreadful things, that she sometimes felt we did not deserve to live. I resented her words at the time. It is only recently, when I already read a lot about Nazism, ISIS and parents killing children, that I have started to understand what she meant. I wish I could talk to her now that I am more tolerant, and wise, and open-minded, but tragically she died several years ago. It was sudden, unexpected, unfair, totally beyond my understanding of reality and could not but add to my AWE for her.
Another example is what I felt when I was reading about Molodaya Gvardia, young partisans, who fought against Germans in the south of Russia during WWII. The organization was disclosed, and most of its members were tortured and then killed. I was reading a dry enumeration of the injuries: cuts and breaks and burns, and I felt terrified at what those 16-year-old children had to suffer. I could not and still cannot possibly imagine how anybody would be able to endure anything like that. At first, it seemed so unnatural, that I was almost thinking they should not have endured, they should have told the Nazi officers all their secrets. Very often, people disapprove of what they do not understand. Now it has changed. I do not think that it was unnatural. It was a different kind of nature, quite vague to mine.
And the last example. This one actually brought up the topic, when I read about it a couple of days ago. A popular blogger and a mother of six, four of them adopted, died. The family lived in cramped conditions, all she cared for was her children, so she blatantly neglected her own health. Many people reacted with resentment: she should not have taken on so many children against all common sense, so that they are now left motherless. As I said before, people very often disapprove of what they do not understand. I do not understand this mother either. But I think she did everything right, could not have been more right. And I feel AWE.