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Topic of the day: “COMPASSES OVER MAPS.” Dear Ones – I’m leaving the TED confe…

Mar 22, 2014

Topic of the day: "COMPASSES OVER MAPS."

Dear Ones –

I'm leaving the TED conference today, with my heart and mind spilling over with ideas and inspiration. It's been an emotional week. I feel like I've been leaking slow tears the entire time I've been here. Part of it has been due to my own nerves about speaking, but mostly I've been overwhelmed by a sense of great humbling honor to have been able to see such powerful, accomplished, talented, driven people at their most vulnerable.

I've said it before: Everyone who gets up on that TED stage is terrified. The pressure is enormous, the audience is daunting (you try keeping your composure in front of Bill Gates and Sting at the same time), and the stakes can feel very high. A good TED speech can make somebody's career — especially for the academics, who have toiled quietly in their fields for decades. Most of the people who speak here aren't natural performers — and some of them (the polar explorers, nature photographers and lab scientists) usually don't even spend time around human beings. And even the folks who are used to being public speakers aren't used to speaking in a room like this one, where everyone is bringing not just their A-Game, but their Olympic Game.

Sometimes it can feel almost cruel, the level of pressure — especially for the introverts. (The way I see it is: If this is hard for ME, and I'm used to talking to a crowd, how must it feel for the quiet microbial researcher?) But there is something about this pressure and fear that also democratizes a conference that might otherwise feel like a parade of egos.

Nobody seems arrogant because EVERYONE IS SCARED.

That's such an incredible thing to realize about people whom you usually see only in their moments of honor, success, praise, accomplishment. It's that common humanity of shakiness, uncertainty and vulnerability that moves me so much. As well as witnessing how much people CARE. As well as that moment when the quiet microbial researcher stands up on stage and shyly explains his life's work, and suddenly the whole audience is on their feet cheering, because our entire view of the world has changed, and we will never see our bodies or our planet the same way again. And the hitherto unknown scientist just stands there blinking in the spotlight, and I burst into tears again.

Yesterday was a particularly emotional day. Former Arizona legislator Gabby Giffords, still limping and searching for words after her gunshot wound, spoke with devastating courage onstage along with her husband Mark Kelly. And the luminescent writer Andrew Solomon (author of FAR FROM THE TREE) gave what very well may be the most eloquent and moving speech I've ever heard about tolerance, belonging and love. (I will share it here the moment that talk is released by TED.)

But the line that stuck with me, and that I will carry away from this entire experience, came from Joi Ito — the director of the MIT Media Lab, when he said that we must always move forward using "compasses over maps." In other words, whatever universe you may inhabit (science, the arts, service, faith, family, etc.) you always have to try to be an explorer. Learn to follow your own intuition rather than waiting for somebody to chart things out for you. Innovation and revelation only come with that approach. Shape your own way. As my guru used to say, "Become a scientist of your own experience."

This morning, as I'm packing up to continue on my journey, trying to digest all I've learned this week, I'm wondering what "compasses over maps" means to all of you.

Does it bring you a feeling of freedom or sense of fear?

Or both? (It brings both to me, but I kinda like that sensation.)

Discuss!

And, of course, ONWARD.
LG

via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall

“SURELY YOU’VE NOTICED A PATTERN BY NOW?” Dear Ones — Yesterday at the TED co…

Mar 21, 2014

"SURELY YOU'VE NOTICED A PATTERN BY NOW?"

Dear Ones —

Yesterday at the TED conference I got to hear the great Sir Ken Robinson speak. Sir Ken holds the honor of having given the most widely viewed TED talk in history — an amazing speech about how schools kill creativity — with something like 25 million people having seen it so far. (And if you haven't seen it, you can watch it here: https://bit.ly/1oEWGFO)

He is incredibly smart and fantastically entertaining, our dear Sir Ken. A dry British wit, with a sharp global mind.

He went on a little tangent yesterday about a visit he once took to a slaughterhouse ("I was probably taking a girl on a date") during which he noticed an office door with a sign that read "Veterinarian." He wondered what purpose a veterinarian could possibly serve in slaughterhouse, and thought to himself, "That guy must be really depressed."

But when he asked one of the slaughterhouse managers what the veterinarian was for, he was told, "Every few weeks, we have the vet perform autopsies on the animals."

To which Sir Ken replied, "But surely you've noticed a pattern by now…?"

Yes, what could possibly be causing all these cows in this slaughterhouse to die…?

Sir Ken told this story in the context of the need for educational reform (haven't we noticed by now that so many kids are failing?) but I think the metaphor works across the board, for so many aspects of our lives. Emotionally, it sure does.

Because surely you've noticed a pattern by now? What's causing your soul to die, and not to live?

What's working for you, and what's not working for you?

What makes you miserable and what elevates you?

Who holds you down, and who brings you light?

What makes you healthy, and what makes you sick?

How you get in your own way, and how you get out of it?

Or are we all still performing superfluous autopsies on ourselves, wondering anew what's gone wrong, puzzling over perfectly obvious cases of repeating mortification? (I know I still do it sometimes: looking at a smoking bullet hole in my life and wondering, "Hmmmm…Drowning? Trip and fall?")

But by this time, you know what it is, though, right? The thing that needs to end? The thing that you need to stop doing? The thing that's actually killing you, day after day?

Stop doing that thing.

Seriously.

Onward,
LG

via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall