Latest
We are the stories we tell ourselves
I love this line. It comes from a wonderful TEDTalk by a famous Indian filmmaker Shekhar Kapur. As the line suggests the Story is a metaphor for life, and following the beautifully suggested logic, we are the directors of the lives we own. Or a single one, a life of my own.
Today I was speaking for a group of teenagers at one of the experimental schools at some “Leadership class”, sharing the stories I’ve collected during my 30UP trip and I challenged them to think of the stories they would imagine and subsequently write about themselves. Then I thought to myself, what if somebody came up to me at the age of 15 suggesting the same. Would that help me be better tuned to listening my inner self, my true self. Would I hear that out? Would that matter? Or what would?
Last several weeks I’ve been working daily with the speakers preparing them for the upcoming TEDxAstana, and few things came up. One was the importance of unconditional love, the one which can only be witnessed between a parent and a kid. There is no other “kind” of love or empathy that matters for a child. That’s been particularly proven during the unique method of helping autistic kids with 100% of success rate. Children with autism can only react to the “sparkling loving eyes”, the sparkle sincere, the love unconditional. Dr Matvievsky suggests that autism is not a medical condition or a pathology, it is a social issue — a lack of love, sincerity, attention. Autism in a way is the hint for the future of the humanity. We “outsource” the attention we need to pay to the children to gadgets, they grow into the social interaction limited to digital emotions. The problem is in autistic behavior of us, as parents, as friends, as lovers.
The greater the knowledge the greater is the responsibility. It is not enough to just know, it is to act on it. Building meaningful contacts, being there for a kid or a friend, giving this sincere sparkle can and should be an aware responsibility, should you care. And I know you do. It is what essentially being a human means.
When at the end of the session kids asked me a funny question: How do I see myself in 10 years? I did not know what else to say, but “to be a human”. To keep on writing this Story of my life, intertwined with the Story of the humanity. Pathos you say? Ethos I answer.
