How TEDxVienna Helped Me With My Quarter Life Crisis

Hello lovelies ♥

It’s Sunday a.k.a. No Makeup Day and I am in my pyjamas on my couch (obvs), and meant to be writing an essay for uni. Instead, I’m going to tell you a little bit about my Saturday, because it’s a more interesting story to tell.

I went to a conference yesterday called TEDxVienna. I assume a lot of you know TED talks. Essentially TED started as an American non-profit that gives really interesting people a stage for 18 minutes. That is all the time they have to share their “ideas worth spreading”, and to tell the audience about an idea, a thought, a concept or a project that they believe people should know about. Speakers include Bill Gates, Salman Khan, Monica Lewinsky, and a bunch of other household names. TEDx events are held all over the world in that same format and host equally amazing and interesting people, but they’re also an opportunity to meet the other attendees, who usually turn out to be insightful and inspirational people. 

so many people!!

My friend Philippa and I at the conference (I loved the pretty blue lanyards!!)

This is the second time I’ve attended the conference and to me, it’s as much about the speakers and their life journeys as about the talks themselves. As a typical twenty-something, I have no clue what I want to do with my life. I mean, literally no clue at all. At this point, becoming a theoretical mathematician seems equally appealing to me as does becoming a political journalist. I am VERY confused. So I enjoy hearing from people who are successful enough that a thousand people would consider it worth their time and money to listen to their ideas. I figure these speakers must be doing SOMETHING right.

There’s always going to be people who are better at public speaking at others, and people who you personally find more charismatic than others. But this year, two talks really left an impression, to the point where I just want to watch them every morning and remind myself of how important they are.

One was given by Matthew Cooke, a film director whose work I wasn’t familiar with but is now on my To Watch list. His talk meant a lot to me for personal reasons. When I was a teenager, I set myself the goal of improving as many lives as possible. Of course, once you grow up, you face so much ridicule and cynicism that you start to question things. After Serious Adult #53 asks you “So have you chosen a career yet?”, Well-Meaning Relative #15 looks you up and down with a pitying look and says “…So you still don’t have a boyfriend, hm?” and Grown-Up Conversation #4636 revolves around mortgages, renting vs. buying and the pros and cons of owning a car in the city, and when even people your age start saying things like “Well, you know, I’d love to help, but I have to save up for gadget X and commodity Y first”, you start wondering whether there’s REALLY anything you can do in the grand scheme of things, and whether it wouldn’t be better to just focus on Building A Career and Finding A Decent Guy and Having A Family. After all, you’re just tiny little you, you probably can’t change that much, and that sort of idealism is best left to the super-rich who can afford to run a foundation, or teenagers who have the time and independence to volunteer in Africa for a few months, and the trust fund to pay for it.

And so, it was SO NICE to see a grown man who clearly Has His Life Together, stand up on a stage in front of a thousand people, and verbalize the gut feeling that I’ve had my whole life: The only thing worth getting up for in the morning is anything that will improve other people’s lives. That is what success means. That is what “winning at life” means. And I am not crazy, because there is clearly at least one other, quite successful, person out there who agrees with me. 

The only talk that topped his was given by a ninety-year old lady called Olga Murray who used to work as a lawyer in San Francisco. Just to give you a comparison, my ninety-year old grandfather spends his days in front of the television ranting and raving at “all those damn foreigners” and warning me not to take the subway in Vienna (there might be foreigners). Not this woman. She stood on stage full of life, and vibrancy, and excitement, and told the story of how, in her retirement, she saved thousands of Nepali children from child labour and abuse. She made it very clear that after 90 years of her life, it wasn’t material goods or money or career success that she looked back upon with joy. It was the moments where she could reach out and connect to other human beings and do something for them. 

All of the other talks I heard on Saturday were great, but those two reminded me that it doesn’t matter that my thighs are chubby and my hair is frizzy or that no matter how hard I try I just can’t get into yoga and green smoothies, or that I haven’t bought an apartment or a car and it doesn’t even matter if I end up never buying these things and never having children and taking in another four cats. All that matters, all that I can control, is that I have a positive impact that’s as big as possible on as many lives as possible. And if I try to do that every day, I will have done all I can.

Damita