If you don't know what TED is, stop right now and go here. Take some time, explore. Watch this one, it's my favorite. Pure brilliance.
Okay, now that you are familiar with TED, I want to familiarize you with their new brain-child, TEDx. These are independently organized events that are now recognized by TED. Check this out. See yours truly?
Yesterday, my friend Whitnee and I drove down to Cedar City to attend TEDxSUU. This is like our brain-child, growing up. We were in the first class to produce this conference (see the Fall 2007 video on the aforementioned page). And last night, I was invited down as an alumna speaker.
The theme of TED is "Ideas Worth Spreading" and this was an idea shared by TEDxSUU. A handful of students from the class were selected to present a shortened version of the presentation. There were also videos played from TED. Check out this one--so good. The students shared ideas about wildlife preservation, the societal concepts of maturity, and the use of color in our perceptions of language, mathematice, and the world at large. There were artistic performances, which were a new addition that I particularly liked.
But at the end of the student speakers, it was my turn. I only had a few minutes--not nearly long enough to give true scope to what I wanted to say. But the point I wanted to make to these fledgling Honors students was about passion. We live in a society of sheep. There is a flock, and everybody wants to be part of the flock, and the flock wants everybody to be part of it. You might want to be a pretty sheep, or a smart sheep, but you are still a sheep. If you venture too far, the flock says no, don't go there, its dangerous. It's not cool. It's lonely. We are discouraged from venturing out from the norm--set by our arbitrary society. People who live outside those bounds are criticized, stigmatized. But the flock remains caught in nothing greater than mediocrity.
The Honors program was always about passion to me. So many people go to college for the degree. They do just enough to get by, to endure until they get handed that paper that tells them they accomplished something. But there is so much potential for more. And not just in school--I want to have an Honors life. It's not just about skating by, doing just enough. There is a deeper, more fulfilling experience to be had.
Too often we are limited by expectations put upon us. In college, you have expectations set by teachers. To pass this class, you must do these things. And so we do those things. In life, we are set expectations by peers, by family, by religion or politics, by employers. All these expectations that we are set to meet. But those expectations actually limit our capacity. If the bar is set here, then we only try to reach here.
We can reset the expectations. We can set our own expectations, and set them far higher than what anybody else can set for us. It might not be cool. People might not accept it--how many times are we told to lower our expectations, because we can't possibly achieve our dreams? But we CAN! By raising the expectations we have for ourselves, we raise our capacity to achieve them. And we never know what new interests and passions and dreams we will discover along the way.
Let's try not to be sheep. Let's try to leave the flock of others' expectations. Let's venture out into this great big world with our eyes and minds open for new ideas. And we can share our own--ideas worth spreading.
