This is a transcript of the speech I gave last night at White Mountain Toastmasters. Thank you all for a wonderful 4 years. I will miss you!
Goodbye, so long, cya, farewell, arrivederci, see you later, au revoir, peace out, bon voyage, Godspeed, adios, bye-bye, adieu.
Good evening Toastmasters, and welcome guests. Goodbye says it all. As many of you are aware, this is my last time with you for over a year. For those who don’t know, I am leaving on a Christian Missions and Ministry trip that will see me in 11 countries in 11 months. Over the next year, I will be spending each month building relationships and learning to love a village or a nation, and just as I begin to get comfortable there, it will be time to leave, and I will have to say Goodbye. It is a word with which I am about to become very familiar. I have to say my Goodbyes to everything here. My family, Squam Lake, my friends, my church family, and you, my Toastmasters family. Tonight, I am here to say Goodbye. I want to talk about the word Goodbye first, and why I am going to embrace it and learn to love it.
Most of you here tonight know that I like words. I like definitions and meanings. Each word carries with it a certain weight, and though it may have synonyms, each will have a slight and subtle difference. Words have their own history, or etymology, and it effects how we use them. When I am crafting a speech, I do my best to choose my words carefully and deliberately, to be certain that each word I use conveys my message.
Many people view the word ‘Goodbye’ as one of such finality that they choose not to say it. They see it as an ending. Most, instead, will choose to say ‘See you later’ which manages to create a veritable paradox. The ‘you’ who you are today is the not the ‘you’ who you will be tomorrow. You can only be this ‘you’ in this moment. Tomorrow, there will have been small and subtle changes. Biologically, phisiologically, and psychologically. Therefore,’See you later’ is an impossibility.
Other Goodbye options are less complicated. Farewell, literally means just that. Fare (or originally journey) well. Arrivederci and adieu mean the same thing. Au Revoir, translated literally means ‘until seeing you again’. Adios means ‘To God’. Most of us have enough of a grasp on foriegn languages to know that ‘bon voyage’ means’good journey’. Or more colloquially, enjoy your trip! An older expression is Godspeed. We have anglicized the ‘speed’ part of this phrase, which was once spelled ‘speid’ or ‘spede’ and meant ‘prosper’. I always thought of Godspeed as ‘God protect you’ but it is more like ‘may God grant you prosperity’.
And yet none of these convey exactly what ‘Goodbye’ means. The earliest findings of the word Goodbye are from 1573, and it is actually a contraction of ‘God be with you’. It went through several changes over the years. ‘You’ was often spelled or written ‘ye’ (I always wondered why we had ‘by’as in authorship, and ‘buy’ as in purchase and ‘bye’ had an ‘e’). Goodbye began to look more familiar, ‘God b’wye’.
Since it is a Christian Mission that is taking me away from here, I want to tell you all God Be With You. And I do ask that you say Goodbye to me as well. No ‘See you laters’ or ‘au revoirs’. For me, there is no finality in Goodbye. Goodbye is not an ending. It becomes a prayer every time you say it. Goodbye is a message of hope. God Be With You. I opened with ‘Goodbye says it all,’ a line from one of my favorite songs. Thus, I will leave you with the one word that does truly say it all. Goodbye.
This blog was inspired by Dre Lindquist. Her blog can be found here: http://andrealindquist.theworldrace.org/index.asp?filename=godbwye&bookmark=true#comments
Sources for this blog include www.dictionary.com, www.m-w.com, and www.etymoline.com
