Short 400-word Speech for Students

#throwback to a photo of me delivering a speech at my friend Doshia's debut

In my English subject, we're required to write a speech about anything we want. After many a paper scrapped, I finally came up with this. I don't think it's my best (but it's too late to change the subject and outline now)

This is the manuscript to "Death to Death" of 465 words. If you ever use this, please credit to me, Penda Penn, and if possible please mention the URL. Thank You!

Death is life’s most formidable foe. Nobody knows for sure what she’ll do or when she’ll strike. Your own fragile, deteriorating body, she can turn against you; a bottle of wine she can use to lure you into her embrace; a phone call from the doctor telling you you’ve developed a life-threatening disease or a swerve of a careless driver might remind you of her power - that no matter who you are, no matter what you do, as a line from my favorite TV show Castle affirms, “Nobody’s tomorrow is guaranteed.”

If you’ve seen any of the Final Destination movies before, you’d know that the protagonist would have this premonition, a premonition of Death’s coming - when, for whom and how. The protagonist would tell everybody, except only a few would believe him and manage to escape Death. But even those who did, in the end, Death still came for them. Death is a serial killer (pun intended), she’s cunning, manipulative and downright ruthless. She won’t stop, not until she’s pinned you down for good.

One moment, you might be standing over the podium delivering your English speech, and the next, you might not be. Something might happen right now, at this very moment that causes your lungs, your brains, your bodies to stop. Does she care that you’re old? Does she care that you’re young, that you have a family, that you have money, that you have dreams, that you’re not ready? No. Death has never, and never will respect people.

Perhaps the scariest thing about Death is the fact that she’s so creative. Like BDO, she finds ways to serve you your sentence. The warrior Atilla the Hun died of a nosebleed, the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe died because he wasn’t able to pee, and one of the pioneers of Anesthesia, Horace Wells used anesthetics to commit suicide.

Now, I’m not telling you all of this to scare you off. I’m telling you this to remind you that life is but a short and fleeting experience. Many have tried to lengthen theirs figuratively by making their names great and known, and literally by searching for a fabled Elixir of Immortality. Oh, the things men do to defeat Death! You don’t realize it’s all in vain. You don’t realize that you were shown the way, yet you continue to search for something else. The only way to defeat Death is to succumb to her temporarily. To make her think she’s defeated you, not realizing you have a Champion on your side. A Champion who’s more powerful than all of you combined. That Champion who had no reason to but still came here to settle the score. That Champion has already won the battle against Death. That Champion has brought Death to Death.