When Someone Leaves It Is Because ...

 I was invited to be Language Evaluator at Grab Toastmasters Club and thought I was doing them a favour, but they were doing me a favour because I won the vote for best table topics speaker.

Table Topics are impromptu speeches. Originally they would have been picked at random from typed subjects on pieces of paper upside down on the table. 

At Grab Toastmasters, excellent quotations were provided by Madam Table topics master. I was given two minutes to comment on a quotation by Paulo Coelho: 'When someone leaves, it is because someone else is about to enter.' 

 I said: 

'This often applies when you change jobs. Maybe the boss leaves and a new boss arrives. He dismisses you, so you leave and somebody takes over your job. You take another job and meet a new boss. 

(I then thought, some of them might not be employed. They could be retired, or students, or job-hunting. Make it relevant to them.)

'Here in a Toastmasters club, you leave at the end of a meeting, and a cleaner comes in to clear the room. You leave your friends, but meet other people on the way home. 

'What if you are deserted, alone? It also applies when you are widowed. You might marry again. 

'You might not. The day after my mother died, my father phoned me and said, I can't find an egg cup. How do I cook an egg? So I raced over to replace my mother.

'Then he had to learn to cook for himself. She had gone, but he became the new person, the cook, in his own life. If somebody cooked for you, you might have to cook for yourself. You are the person who takes over in your own life. 

'In a club like this one, the President and Toastmaster of the Day change. When the red light comes on I have to go. But a new person comes in to speak and comment the next table topic.

'I must leave. Back to you, table topics master.'

After the meeting, I looked up the author and the quotation. I read that, in context, the quotation was about never regretting lost love. 

The full quotation was: 'When someone leaves, it is because someone else is about to enter. I never regretted lost love.' This is a quotation from The Zahir. 

The Author, Paulo Coelho

Paul Coelho, as a speaker.

Paul Coelho, book signing in a bookshop or library.

Photos from Wikipedia, Wikipmedia Commons.

Paulo Coelho (pronounced Pow-loh, quell-yoh) was a multiple prize winning author, born in Brazil, which is Portuguese speaking in South America. He drifted through Europe, did the long multi-day Camposto de Celho pilgrimage walk in Northern Spain, and married and settled in Switzerland. The term Zahir is Arabic and has a double meaning. Zahir, means manifest, like a symbol, such as a clock for time, or telling the truth for truth, or a person such as a saint, or guru, influencer, or role model.  

I told my husband, 'I didn't know the context and what it was about.'

My husband replied, reassuringly, 'Maybe the topics master knew the quotation's context, but, although you didn't, probably nobody else did either.'

I was able to apply the original idea to other aspects of life, and learned about the famous author who is well known in other cultures.

Yehudi Menuhin, violinist, with Paul Coelho, author. 

Paulo Coelho, with a charming smile