https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEGfFq6HDxE
(Play School Theme 1966 - 2016)
I have watched 100s of TEDTalks and no doubt most of them have offered very inspirational and unique ideas to resolve personal life issues and stimulate deep thought to life’s simple but complex questions. Some of my favourite TEDTalks include “Looks Aren’t Everything”, “You’ll fail to have a great career”, “The Philosophy to Happiness”, “The Universe”, “Why did I give up watching porn?”, “Why Do We Ask Questions?”, “How to make people listen to you?”, “Depression” and “Are schools killing education?” There are links to my favourite TEDTalks below:
— Do Schools kill creativity?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY&t=12s
— How to escape education’s death valley?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX78iKhInsc
— Why we do what we do?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpc-t-Uwv1I&t=7s
— How great leaders inspire action?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4&t=3s
— The puzzle of motivation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y&t=77s
— Questioning the universe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjBIsp8mS-c&t=29s
— My philosophy for a happy life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36m1o-tM05g
— Why we choose suicide?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1QoyTmeAYw
— Why I stopped watching porn?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRJ_QfP2mhU
— The psychology of self-motivation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sxpKhIbr0E
— After watching this, your brain will not be the same
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNHBMFCzznE&t=3s
— Mathematics and Sex
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2vN2QXZGnc
— Why do we ask questions?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9hauSrihYQ
— Why you will fail to have a great career?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKHTawgyKWQ
— How to speak so that people want to listen?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIho2S0ZahI
— Inside the mind of a master procrastinator
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU
— The surprising habits of original thinkers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxbCHn6gE3U
— Who are you, really? The puzzle of personality
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYvXk_bqlBk
— What really matters at the end of life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apbSsILLh28
— Depression, the secret we share
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eBUcBfkVCo
— Looks aren’t everything. Believe me I’m a model
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM4Xe6Dlp0Y
— The power of introverts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0KYU2j0TM4
As most of you notice TED is about ideas that are worth sharing to the world and taken note from those who are or are not qualified nor have the background knowledge to understand it. When those presenters begin to communicate with you personally, they will always tell anecdotes recounting their personal experiences that they find relevant to the conversation. No doubt those experiences are quite touching but there’s a few questions that keeps plaguing my mind. Why do we want to tell stories? Why do we want to inspire others? What motivates us to share ideas with anonymous people who possibly could not comprehend you? Stories is not exclusive to lecture theatres but also in the family home, classroom, or at work break. The word “story" in the context we are discussing is a narrative which is a report of connected events, truthful or imaginary, presented in a sequence of written or spoken words, or still or moving images, or both. The word “narrative” comes from the Latin narrare, “to tell”, which is derived from the adjective gnanus, meaning “knowing” or “skilled”. Most of the storytellers are those who have experienced numerous significant events that have been personally amusing, stigmatising, fascinating and occasionally life-threatening. You can predict a majority of the most eye-catching storytellers are elderly people and they speak in a distinct accent that is musically delightful to the human ear. When we hear someone say “let me tell you a story”, we adjust our body posture by opening up our shoulders, give the storyteller our full attention, open both our eyes and gaze at the storyteller as if we are constructing the story plot being told into a mental movie without our imaginations. We consider storytelling as the most effective, time-tested way to transmit meaning and ideas from one human being to another. This skill has been going on since the beginning of time when our first ever ancestors sat around the tribal fire. This is how past civilisations pass on their wisdom to the next generation and so forth. This is how religions pass on the sacred teachings of their faith. This is how my and your parents, our grandparents and so on transmit the values and opinions they want to impart on me and their children respectively. Our elderly / seniors / pensioners are the most experienced and observed events that we never thought had ever happened. We all know their days are numbered and it’s understandable they convey to their children and grandchildren on their illustrious and adventurous career and time on Earth as a human being through the touching act of storytelling. Despite their mature age, I believe our elderly still have plenty to give and contribute to society by telling stories to humans of the younger generation and knowing their values and opinions will last for another at least generation, they can sign off their life on Earth with a laugh and a wry smile.
What I find fascinating is how powerful storytelling is and how it shapes the way we think of the world around us. As you’re listening to someone’s story right now, you are establishing trust and connection between yourself aka the listener and the speaker. You are then receiving more information through your ears, becoming more attentive, engaging with emotions and allowing yourself to participate, cognitively, in the narrative. Furthermore, the hidden messages that come through stories encodes the speaker’s values and skills that were used to survive society’s challenges and obstacles in their day. Stories make a better foundation to teach concepts and ideas by illustrating them in relevant and common instances through creativity and fun humour. Every single part of our brain becomes stimulated as we mentally decode the hidden take-home messages from the stories we hear. This helps us make sense of our ever-changing world, shape perceptions via our subconscious mind, reframe frustration, paradoxes, and suffering, change our behaviour and provide a dependable way for people to remember, retrieve and retell this meaningful message. We tend to be more attentive to those who currently have a disability like blindness, deafness, severe injury, dyslexia, cancer, mental illness and muteness. It suggests that as they are human beings too, we naturally express our sympathy for their pain and suffering. We open up both our ears as morally the most respectful and appropriate action for someone who seeks to spread their message regarding the mental and social challenges that come about of their horrific experience.
Stories are also conveyed through music as well especially symphony orchestras or classical solos. At times when people have difficulty communicating their emotions and feelings over certain experiences, they resort to handcrafting instruments that emanate harmonic sounds in the form of music. Because our brains naturally exhibit musicality, we can decipher through our hearing whether a melody or harmony is depressing, romantic, dramatic, calm, enjoyable or serious based on the volume, tempo, pitch, rhythm, timbre, tone and the order of the musical notes being played. Musicality is "a sensitivity to, knowledge of, or talent for music" or "the quality or state go being musical”. This is the reason why we can distinguish someone asking a question, making an argument, slurring while drunk or solemnly explaining a concept.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative
Stories or more accurately, relevant aspects of personal anecdotes are part of the camaraderie amongst political or leadership campaigns. I’m sure most of you living in America were astounded that your 45th inaugural president is Donald J. Trump and from the endless and passionate Anti-Trump demonstrations I witness on the news back in Australia, it is quite clear most of you fear infinite worse case scenarios. These scenarios include anger, war and division within an ironically united states, damaged relationships between international allies, continuous political spin and headline bashing by the selectively biased media. As people across the country from the “left-wing division” continue to demonstrate their powerful self-imposed rejection of reality laying in front of their eyes, I on other hand ponder about the reasons behind Trump’s successful campaign to the White House. Despite all the media backlash and negativity bias on every political action and announcement of the Trump administration, have you ever wondered what makes Trump inspiring? Although he may have exclusively shared a few regrettable views on social media or recorded on an audio piece unbeknownst to him, was it his harsh words that inspired people to believe in him as a successful leader? Or was it how he delivered that words? Not everyone in society has the basic knowledge and cognitive thinking to understand and decode the hidden messages delivered by leaders alike that ultimately reveals the truth. For instance, not everyone will understand that increasing public transport services requires basic understanding of engineering mechanics, management limits, availability of trains (old and new), capacity limits on railway corridors, costings, appropriate training programs, impacts on other modes of transport like that at level crossings and choosing the most suitable people with the appropriate personal characteristics, values and opinions that can guarantee delivery of this political promise. If you notice the live street interviews during the white house campaigns, Trump supporters claim they like him because “he says it like it is” and “he shares the same voice as themselves”. These supporters mostly consist of white low to middle-income earners currently living in both rural and urban cities of states in the central part of the USA. This is evidence of democracy at work which we morally feel dissatisfied about thanks to the over-exaggerated biased reporting from the right-wing American and Australian media. For the sake of this discussion I’ll discuss the politics of democracy and conservatism which almost no one likes discussing in another post.
While most of my friends are happily sharing their experiences during their childhood and adolescence, I, on the other hand, have no one other than my family to share my experiences with. Living in a household regime that enforced discipline, hygiene, strict use of language and 100% attendance to classes even when I’m ill, it’s obvious I was not given many opportunities to socialise outside the academic environment. I can’t remember much from my childhood to be honest, but I know I rarely attended house parties, sporting matches, camps, restaurant dates in my youth. Most of my adventures overseas and interstate were always with family members and relatives who had a close relationship with my parents and grandparents but not me. Every one of their conversations were unbearably loud with sarcastic laughter and Chinese humour I barely understood. The topics of conversation would always feature overly emotive anecdotes of their socio-economic hardships living in impoverished communities in rural and urban Chinese cities engulfed by political rivalries, fears of warship, crime waves and communism. Although their stories are extremely grieving which stimulates my sympathy for them, they often repeat the same stories word for word and I began to become annoyed with them. I can’t be sure if they’re aware of it or not, but it is quite clear these experiences living in tough times have scarred them for life and are embedded in their long-term memory. I, on the other hand, fortunately don’t have to experience these situations like my family did during the mid 1900s, but secretly I’m envious of my parents gaining experience in social situations that forced them to improvise solutions to survive life’s harshest challenges. They always call me the lucky one, because living standards in Australia are seen as luxurious, peaceful, spacious, hygienic and environmentally friendly compared to the shabby apartments and homes built in rural Chinese towns and suburbs. Although my parents' decision to migrate to Australia in search of a better life may have saved me from living the childhood then adolescent life they endured, I still remain curious to experience these situations for myself to gain a better understanding of the messages delivered through their stories. Everyone has a story that is worth listening to but I feel no one is willing to hear my life story.
Unlike everyone else, I didn’t attend parties to get myself high on narcotics or intoxicated on alcohol like vodka, spirits, sherry and tequila, or dance erratically on the floor or table whilst showing off the muscles and moobs, shouting discouraging and idiotic expletives. I didn’t start violent melees with peers I didn’t like ultimately risking serious injury to myself and everyone else, property damage, after-school detention, long suspensions and continuous embarrassment and teasing from allies of the peers affected. I didn’t join a bully group to pick on, tease and mock generalised personas for the sake of it like the geeks or bookworms, the introverts, and other rival jocks because I’m a kindhearted person who spreads the love and believes no one deserves to be made fun of unless it’s warranted. I don’t have a crazy mind to creatively come up with skits and special effects to pull off simple, ambitious and occasionally risky pranks with the intended outcome of laughter and clickbait which is hard to achieve with trickery. The professional acting is hard to maintain throughout the sketch, finding the necessary resources and people to execute specific roles is time-constraining and at times, frustrating, if things don’t go according to what you’ve planned in terms of cost and availability of everyone involved in production. Even I did successfully pull off the prank as planned, my audience may criticise and shame me rather than roll on the floor laughing like a hyena and commemorate me with a thumbs up or reaction. Although maintaining fitness is crucial to longevity, I’m not a gym junkie like many other people because I feel doing repetitive workouts lifting variable masses of weights is boring. Training at the gym is not as fun as playingsport or Pokemon Go which utilises a whole range and combination of motor skills, strength training and research on suitable nutrition to support bone and muscle integrity. I always hear from every male gym junkie that the main aim of uptaking this training regime is to increase the sex drive and attract the most girls, which frankly is still an urban myth that is yet to be proven. I don’t have a self-centred, misogynist and narcissistic personality where I feel the need to reveal my weekly achievements on social media and post progress photos online seeking validation, compliments from friends and peers, and calling for profitable promotions and advertising offers of nutritional and bodybuilding products from food companies, fitness organisations and fellow fitness bloggers and gym junkies.
If I had a wish, it would be a popular talk show host like Ellen Degeneres, Oprah Winfrey and Charlie Pickering inviting me onto their show for an interview giving me an opportunity to share my life story, values and opinions I have gathered along my journey. But we all know that will not happen anytime soon or ever.
— Who would want to hear someone discuss the complex philosophical details of society and the reasons we continue to notice more problems than solve them?
— Who would want to hear me talk about my hobby playing with his Thomas the Tank Engine set, drawing out overhead structures and wiring above a set of railway tracks on a drawing board or constructing an expansive train simulator?
— Who would want to hear me discuss about the hardships and challenges of being different and going against the expectations set by his parents and peers?
— Who would want to hear me explain the biological, chemical, psychological, physical, social, economic, political, sociological and philosophical concepts of every known situation in our universe?
So far only my grandmother has the openness to hear me out. Despite the language barrier, she was fascinated with my thought process and she complimented me for my broad spectrum of philosophical thought. However I cannot name or find anyone else who has the optimism to hear me out and empathy to understand my side of the world even if it’s beyond the boundaries of their knowledge bank. As far as life goes, my journey to find at least one person who could see things the way I see it may be futile which is just as likely as finding a needle under a googolplex haystacks.
On a final note, if you read this Ellen Degeneres, ever since I started watching your show I have always dreamed of being in the studio audience and even better you calling out my name for an interview or participating in a fun game like Know or Go, Impressions, Pictionary, or blindfolded musical chairs. But living many a mile away in the quiet streets of Melbourne, I can not see that ever happening. All of my friends have been to the USA whilst I'm sitting here bored and unproductive typing this blog expressing my depression online. It would be honourable for me personally if my first ever trip to the USA would be at your Warner Bros Studio talk show set. If you invite me for a little dance, I’d be more happy to even though my dance moves aren’t up to scratch.
