First Toastmasters Speech: The Icebreaker

Almost eight weeks have passed since I first attended a Toastmasters meeting, and I gave my first speech: the Icebreaker. The Icebreaker is essentially a self-introduction, but it’s a short speech, and it doesn’t have to be strictly limited to introducing yourself. So I tried connecting a recent realization of mine with the reason I joined this club.

“A Foot Out of a Foot” #

Have you ever had to walk with a limp?

Growing up, I never broke a bone. I remember seeing a classmate with a broken leg, rolling around in a wheelchair, and thinking… that looks kind of fun. I was almost jealous. Nothing ever happened to me. I just assumed my body would work.

Then one day, that assumption just… broke.

(showing picture)

It started with this. Twelve centimeters long. A benign tumor. It had been growing quietly in my foot for a year, and I had no idea.

When the surgeon took it out, he showed me the picture afterward. The nurse looked at it with me and said, “Wow. It’s like a foot… coming out of a foot.” My friends saw it and said it looked like a piece of chicken breast. And honestly? I laughed with them. It was easier to laugh.

I thought, okay, I leave the hospital, I recover, I’m back to normal. Right?

But that’s not what happened. What met me instead was a body that just didn’t work the same way anymore. The surgery saved my foot. But it also left me… unable to stand on it.

And during that time, I noticed something about the world.

It’s ambivalent. Cold and warm, sometimes in the same hour.

When I went outside on crutches, breathing hard just to get down the street, there was almost always someone. Someone who’d stop and ask, “Do you need some help?” I didn’t know that Seoul citizens could be this kind, at that time, of course.

But once, a taxi driver, on the way home from the hospital, told me he got another call. And he asked me to get off blocks away from my house.

It might be a small thing, but in the state I was in… it felt a lot bigger.

That mix, kindness and coldness, so close to each other, it stuck with me. It taught me something: nothing comes in just one color.

These days, I walk fine. Most of you probably never noticed. But after all of that, I decided to join Toastmasters, and one question followed me. Why am I here, at Toastmasters?

Maybe I wanted to get better at English. For my career.

Maybe I just wanted to be around people again, after too much time alone with crutches.

Or maybe… I wanted a reminder that I wasn’t the only one carrying something.

Somehow, knowing that everyone’s got their own version of “heavy” made mine feel a little lighter.

Maybe it’s all of them.

But whatever it is, I’m here now.

And I’d like to find out what brought you here, too.

Afterward #

While the post-speech nerves were still buzzing, a senior member gave me a piece of advice: “It’s like driving, it will become second nature.” It resonated with me and calmed me down. And then it hit me: everyone in this room must have gone through this same feeling at some point.