The Future We Will Create

The Future We Will Create is a 73 minute documentary focusing on a yearly event known as TED. Standing for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, this conference is a gathering of brilliant people from literally every facet of our society. Here they share their thoughts, inventions, ideas and passions. Everything from ways to build cheap homes for people in third world countries to the latest breakthroughs in touchscreen technology are covered over a period of four days in Monterey California. Among the attendees and presenters are people like Bill Gates, Al Gore, Larry Page and Sergey Brin (the co-founders of Google), Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon), musicians like Bono, as well a large amount of people with great ideas who have yet to make a name for themselves. With attendance passes costing a pretty $4,400, it’s not the sort of experience you can decide to have on a whim. Still, despite the steep entrance fee, many of the same people make the trip year after year. Watching this documentary, it’s easy to see why.

This documentary consists of a bunch of small segments of various talks given at the 2006 TED Conference. While the presenters are only given an 18 minute window themselves, we run through many at an even faster rate – giving maybe 5 or less minutes per talk. It doesn’t feel rushed, though. The spirit of their message comes across easily enough through their sincerity and passion. These people love what they do, and they do what they do because they know they can make a change – and more importantly, they want to. I like to believe that the desire to make a meaningful difference in the world is innate to most of us. Many times it is stamped down, voluntarily or by our fears and the expectations of those around us. We have bills to pay. We have schools and jobs and friends and family to worry about. Life happens, and it happens fast. What we need to realize is that it happens fast for everyone. People who really and truly make a difference in the lives of others do so knowing that it is sometimes hard. They do so knowing that it may require an investment of time, or money, or skills. They know that they may need the help of others to get it done. However, even knowing the challenges, they still choose to move on. They choose to force the change they wish for in the world. To me, this is the hallmark of someone who truly wants change. Aware of the cost, they take the next step. That is heroism. Said one of the presenters, a man by the name of Cameron Sinclair, “My mother always said that there is nothing worse than all mouth and no trousers. I’m fed up with talking about making change. You only make it by doing it.” His dream, his project, is to improve the standard of living of the poorest people in the world by providing cheap but quality housing. He won one of the three prizes given away every year, each consisting of $100,000.00 as well as being a key speaker at TED 2006. By doing so he was able to create contacts with the powerful people in attendance, and really get the ball rolling on this idea.

Talks by authorities on leadership and performing poets (seriously) bump elbows and share stages with the most powerful men and women in the IT industry. Professors at such prestigious schools as MIT follow performances by preteen musician virtuosos. There really is nothing I can quite compare it to. I have an incredible desire to go there and absorb not just the message of each talk, but the spirit of the entire event. Bucket List addition for absolute certain.

In closing I wanted to comment on a few things said in this film. Honestly, each of the topics could be a subject for exhaustive papers and research studies, and I am perhaps among the least qualified to even begin to tackle them, but I want to at least mention them for anyone who reads this to think about.

First – Sir Ken Robinson (at the time writing a book called Epiphany) talks about a woman named Gillian Lynne. When Gillian was a little girl, a mere 8 years old, her parents were contacted by the school she was attending. Little Gillian was having trouble concentrating – she was turning her work in late, was constantly fidgeting, and so on. This was in 1934. Today, no doubt, she would have been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. At the time, however, her parents were told she had a learning disorder. Worried about their daughter, her parents turned to a specialist. After discussing the many problems Gillian was having in school, the specialist sat down by her. “Gillian, I need to have a word with your mother in private. Stay here, if you would, and we’ll be right back.” Rising to leave, he paused to turn the radio on, and he and her mother left. They stood outside a moment, and then peeked back in. Little Gillian was by the radio dancing. They watched her for a few minutes before the doctor said, “Mrs. Lynne, your daughter isn’t sick. She’s a dancer. Take her to a dance school.” And she did. Gillian went on to audition for the royal ballet school, was accepted, graduated, and founded her own company. Roles were written specifically for her, and she is a multi-millionaire. Says Sir Ken Robinson, “Somebody else might have put her on medication, and told her to calm down . . . I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology. One in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our mines in the way that we strip mine the earth for a particular commodity. And for the future, it won’t service. . . we have to rethink the fundamental principals on which we are educating our children. What TED celebrates is the gift of the human imagination. We have to be careful now that we use this gift wisely. . . and the only way we’ll do it is by seeing our creative capacities for the richness they are, and seeing our children for the hope that they are. . . we may not see this future, but they will, and our job is to help them make something of it.” For those of you that know me, you’ll know my stance on medication. I think there are people who genuinely need it. Adversely, I think that there are people who are medicated who do not have to be. The capacity of the human mind, when driven (and given proper guidance) to heal itself is amazing. I wish that everyone could look at their life and say with honesty these words: “I’m doing my best. This is where I want to be. I have taken opportunities and ignored others, and that’s okay. They have shaped me into who I am. If there is something that needs to be changed, then I am going to work my hardest at changing it. I am going to ask why and why not, and I will not be afraid of the answer. I am going to do my part. If I am not happy, then I am going to find something that makes me happy and run with it.” Can you imagine a world where we said those things, and meant them? Where they were true for all, or even most of us? We’re human, and we make mistakes, but don’t you dare let yourself use that as an excuse for failing to do what you can in order to be happy. By doing so you’d not only rob yourself, but others of potential happiness. Happiness you absolutely can help to foster not just in yourself, but in your community and more. Some people tackle a nations food shortage, others a local park that needs to be cleaned. What’s important is that they’re tackling something. Remember to be true to yourself. Dance if you’re a dancer. Don’t let society or anyone stop you from being you.

Second – Bob Guccione, the founder of Spin and Discover Magazines, said something small but profound. “I think the marvelous thing about TED is it brings out the child in all of us, and I think we all need that . . . we need to revisit that part of us that said ‘wow’ when we [really] looked at the sky for the first time. . .” Can you think of a moment like that, that you’ve had? A moment were you were awed and speechless, due to…something positive? Seriously. Stop reading this and think of one. Do you have it? No? Okay, I will wait.

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Maybe if I told you one of mine? I was backpacking across Europe by myself. I was in Switzerland – Geneva, to be exact. Sitting by the lake that the town encircles, my right foot resting on my left knee. It was dark out. I’d brought my small netbook – honestly I can’t remember why, but there I was with it. I’ve always been totally enthralled by water at night. The lights playing on the surface as it bobs slightly first this way, then that. Across from me and to my left, colored lights of buildings sprayed across the water. Blue. Red. Yellow. Green. Different shades of each. I don’t know what it was exactly that moved me so, but I could scarcely look away. I stared and stared – it was perhaps the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I wanted to share this experience with my older brother with whom I have a very special relationship – I opened the laptop and messaged him, knowing he’d be at work back in America, but hoping he’d be available. He was. I typed to him, explaining where I was, how beautiful it was. I tried to use my webcam for him to see, but the wireless network I was using was not very good. Regardless, eventually I signed off, still staring at the slowly changing water. At the lights as they played on its surface.

I had a thought, then, staring at the water. I’d considered the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, the translation of which says “if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you”, and thought that surely the opposite of such a statement must be as true as the first. If you gaze long into beauty, beauty must surely gaze long into you. This confirmation to me that we are what we surround ourselves with – that we are what we choose to be, what we choose to become – was an incredibly beautiful moment for me. I gazed around me at everything with wide eyes, drinking it in. Nothing had changed, yet it all seemed new and incredible to my eyes. That sort of feeling is something I can carry with me always.That is the sort of feeling I feel like Mr. Guccione is referring to.

Okay, now that you’ve had some time, have you thought of one? Good. Think not necessarily about what you saw, but how it made you feel. Now imagine being able to have that feeling, that tingle that goes through your entire body when you realize you’re part of something incredible, every day of your life. At the very least, having a semblance of it with you, and often. There are people like that. There are people who follow their passions, not money. People who wake up in the morning with a purpose beyond the material. People who know that because they are alive and doing what they’re doing, someone, somewhere, is better off than they would have been otherwise. Think about that first. Think about what your talents and skills are, or what would you would like them to be, second. Third, think of how you can help people with those skills or talents. Remember well the words of Tony Robbins: “the defining factor is never resources, it’s resourcefulness”. If you want it enough, it can happen. I have a hard time fathoming the type of world we’d live in if these three simple steps were followed, but I like to try and imagine it anyways.

Thirdly, and lastly, I just wanted to point out something that occurred to me after I’d finished watching. The title of this film is ‘The Future We Will Create”. At first, I thought perhaps a better name might have been ‘The Future We Can Create”, but that’s not the point at all. The point is we ARE creating the future. Right now. You, me, your neighbors and that guy you see on the street and the people he knows and their friends and their family, expanding forever. It’s being created with or without your input. It’s going to happen. You get to decide how it turns out. In a very real, very large way, you can affect the course of history. The words people will read about our time and the times following us is a direct result of actions people like you and me make every single day. Ghandi was just one man. Mother Teresa, simply a woman. Don’t you think for an instant that a single person can’t change the course of history. The course of history is altered every day by choices that are made by individuals, just as much as they are by any government or group. History is also altered by choices that are not made. Do not let what could have been haunt you.

Mark Twain wrote: Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

I’m going to do just that. What about you?

-Teddy.