Toasting

Speaking Fearlessly with Holiday Cheer.

I hope you find an occasion to provide a toast for and to your fellow holiday revelers.

This months Toastmaster Magazine has an article Tips on Toasting Well.

“The purpose of a toast is to shine a gentle spotlight and pay tribute to the honored guest or event. Toasts typically proffer well wishes, good fortune, long life, health, happiness, sage advice or other positive thoughts. …Begin by introducing yourself, state first and last name….explain how you’re related to the guest of honor then present the toast….Be brief, be bold, be done.”

Be Brief-“No toast should last longer than 60 seconds was Mark Twain's golden rule.”

Be Bold-“Stand proud and speak loud. Ensure that everyone sitting in the room…can hear your tasteful toast.”

Be Done-“Smile, nod, and accept any applause…then refocus the spotlight on the guest of honor.”
…”speakers can add a humorous story about the guest of honor after they explain how they know the honoree and before the actual toast.”
Why is it called a ‘toast’?
From Shipley’s Dictionary of Word Origins “in the middle ages, drinks often had sopped in them a piece of spiced and toasted bread….The Tattler #24 June 4, 1709 tells that the use of the word (toast) arose when a celebrated beauty of the time of Charles II was in Cross Bath; one of her admirers took a glass of the water in which she stood, and drank her health to the company. Another present said he liked not the liquor, but would have had the toast(i.e. the lady sopped in it. Thereafter, when men drank to the one they delighted to honor, it was called a toast.”
A Master of Ceremonies in formal terms is called the Toastmaster.
I learned of the "Toast to the Idiots" from my Gurdjieff teacher in 1971.

Annie Lou Stavely, Gurdjieff Group Leader




A true "idiot" is one who knows that he does not know, a ‘conscious incompetent.’



The toasts were given at the end of a meal, usually with Armagnac or Calvados, high alcohol content Cognac’s. The group gathered to do ‘the work’, the Magnus Opus and the toasts were celebrating and honoring that we knew we were mechanical slaves, sleep walking through our lives and were will to work to awaken. Without Gurdjieffs’ help, and he died in 1949, no one got past idiot # 6.


1 ordinary idiot-Here is to the ordinary idiot, those who sit at this table.
2 super idiot-Here is to the super idiot who thinks the most.
3 arch idiot-Here is to the arch idiot, who would have us all follow him/her.
4 hopeless idiot-Here is to the hopeless idiot who gave up too soon.
5 compassionate idiot-Here is to the compassionate idiot, who sees us all in the same soup.
6 squirming idiot-Here is to the squirming idiot, the idiot who wants out.
7 square idiot
8 round idiot
9 zigzag idiot
10 enlightened idiot
11 doubting idiot
12 swaggering idiot
13 born idiot
14 patented idiot
15 psychopathic idiot
16 polyhedral idiot
Idiots 17-21 constituted a spiritual hierarchy, reflecting progressive gradations of objective reason
Idiot 18 presented the highest development which a human being could reach, but in order to attain it, he had first voluntarily to descend again from 17 to 1, the ordinary idiot.
Idiots 19 and 21 were reserved for the sons of God.
21 - Unique Idiot (God himself being the Unique idiot)

Happy Holidays
Gary C Smith
Blogging Idiot

It's Your Ideas not the Words.

You may forget the words, but the ideas are still there.
If it is poetry, a song, or someone else’s work, use their words. Be diligent and respect their work, however you have permission to use your ideas in public speaking fearlessly.

It is YOUR IDEAS that have stirred you into a presentation. It is your task to hold those ideas and flow with them with stories and keypoints like waterfalls into pools.

Present an idea, a sacred point that leads to a story, a pool of imagination that the audience can take a cool dip or a refreshing swim or shocking plunge into the next pool, the next point, next story.

Then add the next idea, this falls drops us into a new way of seeing, a new vista to assess our position and see if that will support our fall into the next pool of multiple ideas or a pool where the one right decision can be made.
As you soak in that pool prepare for the next plunge over the edge of limits and safety into the next new pool of unlimited ideas or the current that brings your raft into the port of prosperity, happiness, and to the next stage of your journey.

Remember it is your ideas, clearly formed you are presenting. It’s your showboat of who you are. Know your self and your ideas will flow and carry your audience with them.