Speeches by Nduati

I recently became hooked on painting. Not because I’m good at it—I once tried to draw two doves in a romantic setting, and they ended up looking like a sparrow and a penguin kissing on a tree.

What I love about painting is watching paint dry. That phrase usually means something boring, but for me, it’s zen. You have to wait for the paint to dry for the painting to come out right. For example, if you try to paint a blue sky and immediately add a yellow sun without waiting for the blue to dry, you’ll end up with a green sun.

Those quiet moments of waiting allow me to slow down and clear my mind.

I also love how each layer builds on the one before it. I put down one layer, let it dry, then add another—slowly, something beautiful begins to take shape.

That’s exactly how I felt as I read the book King by Jonathan Eig.

I saw the first layer: Martin Luther King Jr. being chosen to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott  because he was a new preacher in town. That’s when people first began to notice him.

Then came another layer: his Letter from Birmingham Jail, a foundational text of the Civil Rights Movement. In it, he laid out the ethics of civil disobedience – fighting for justice with moral clarity.

Then another: the magisterial “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, where he painted a powerful vision of America’s future.

And finally, the image that brought it all together—Martin appearing on the cover of Time magazine. His face looked calm, yet ablaze with a quiet fire the whole world could feel.

At that point, he was a successful man and celebrated.

In ancient Rome, sculptors who made mistakes would patch them up with wax. If, say, the nose or ears broke off a statue, they’d fix it with wax and paint over it. But when the sculpture was placed outside and the sun hit it, the wax would melt—the ear would fall off and then the nose and maybe an arm.

Reading about the later phases of Martin’s life felt like watching a beautiful statue begin to fall apart.

Early on, he focused mainly on the South. But later, he began speaking out against the subtler racism of the North. He also criticized the Vietnam War. Because these were things a lot of his supports did not believe in, people who once supported him began to withdraw their support. He was criticized from every direction.

During that time, he kept saying, “People don’t understand me!” He wanted to explain himself, but the more he spoke his truth, the more people turned against him.

Even I found myself questioning him—like when you yell at a footballer on TV or shout at someone in a horror movie for making a dumb decision. I found myself thinking, “What are you doing, Martin?”

I was like everyone else—I didn’t understand him. Not until I understood how different I am from him in some ways.

Here’s what I’ve come to understand about myself.

For the past year, I’ve held the title of District Director. And I don’t like to put “DD” before my name on Zoom or in most of my emails. I always say, “I don’t do this for the title.”

But lately, when people just call me “Robert,” I get mad as hell! I still have five more hours left as District Director, for goodness’ sake!

I think I’m like most people. I have always had a passion for people of all walks of life getting a place where they can get better as public speakers. I have worked to make Toastmasters that place. The title -“DD”-  became a symbol of my success in doing this. That is not a problem. The problem is the title becoming the success itself. So that when you lose the title, or people no longer praise you, it feels like you’ve lost your success.

Just because he was criticized, didn’t mean Martin had lost his success.

After his death, over 1,000 schools in America were named after him. Monuments were built. A national holiday was established in his honor. To this day, he remains a global symbol of civil rights.

To Martin, success was about changing people’s minds. When they loved him—he was trying to change minds. When they hated him—he was still trying to change minds.

When people didn’t understand him, he understood himself. He had clarity about his mission. And that gave him the strength to keep going.

Many of us don’t do what we’re called to do because we aren’t appreciated—or we stop because we feel misunderstood.

But to be truly successful, we don’t need to be understood. We need to understand ourselves. We need to understand what success means to us. We need to understand the person we are sculpting or creating ourselves into.

And when you see the final image of who you are becoming, whether others appreciate it or not, it will be an image of success.