港澳珠大桥TED演讲：美妙生活的三个秘诀

2021年1月20日发(作者：许居衍)
美妙生活的三个秘诀

So the Awesome story: It begins about 40 years ago, when my mom and
my dad came toCanada. My mom left Nairobi, Kenya. My dad left a small
village outside of Amritsar, India. And theygot here in the late 1960s. Th
ey settled in a shady suburb about an hour east of Toronto, andthey settl
ed into a new life. They saw their first dentist, they ate their first hambur
ger, and theyhad their first kids. My sister and I grew up here, and we ha
d quiet, happy childhoods. We hadclose family, good friends, a quiet stre
et. We grew up taking for granted a lot of the things that myparents coul
dn't take for granted when they grew up -- things like power always on i
n our houses,things like schools across the street and hospitals down the
road and popsicles in the grew up, and we grew older. I w
ent to high school. I graduated. I moved out of the house, Igot a job, I fo
und a girl, I settled down -- and I realize it sounds like a bad sitcom or a C
at Stevens'song --
(Laughter)
but life was pretty good. Life was pretty good.
2006 was a great year. Under clear blue skies in Julyin the wine region of
Ontario, I got married, surrounded by 150 family and friends.
2007 was agreat year. I graduated from school, and I went on a road trip
with two of my closest 's a picture of me and my friend, Chri
s, on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. We actually sawseals out of our car
window, and we pulled over to take a quick picture of them and then blo
ckedthem with our giant heads.
(Laughter) So you can't actually see them, but it was breathtaking,believ
e me.
(Laughter)
2008 and 2009 were a little tougher. I know that they were tougher for a
lot of people, not justme. First of all, the news was so heavy. It's still hea
vy now, and it was heavy before that, but whenyou flipped open a news
paper, when you turned on the TV, it was about ice caps melting, warsgo
ing on around the world, earthquakes, hurricanes and an economy that
was wobbling on thebrink of collapse, and then eventually did collapse, a
nd so many of us losing our homes, or ourjobs, or our retirements, or ou
r livelihoods.
2008,
2009 were heavy years for me for anotherreason, too. I was going throu
gh a lot of personal problems at the time. My marriage wasn't goingwell,
and we just were growing further and further apart. One day my wife ca
me home from workand summoned the courage, through a lot of tears,
to have a very honest conversation. And shesaid,

ever heard andcertainly the most heartbreaking thing I'd ever heard, unt
il only a month later, when I heardsomething even more heartbreaking.
My friend Chris, who I just showed you a picture of, had been battling m
ental illness for some for those of you whose lives have been t
ouched by mental illness, you know how challengingit can be. I spoke to
him on the phone at 10:30 p.m. on a Sunday night. We talked about the
TVshow we watched that evening. And Monday morning, I found out tha
t he disappeared. Verysadly, he took his own life. And it was a really hea
vy time.
And as these dark clouds were circling me, and I was finding it really, real
ly difficult to think ofanything good, I said to myself that I really needed
a way to focus on the positive somehow. So Icame home from work one
night, and I logged onto the computer, and I started up a tiny websitecall
ed . I was trying to remind myself of the simple
, universal, littlepleasures that we all love, but we just don't talk about e
nough -- things like waiters and waitresseswho bring you free refills with
out asking, being the first table to get called up to the dinner buffet ata
wedding, wearing warm underwear from just out of the dryer, or when c
ashiers open up a newcheck-out lane at the grocery store and you get to
be first in line -- even if you were last at theother line, swoop right in the
re.
(Laughter)
And slowly over time, I started putting myself in a better mood. I mean,
50,000 blogs are started aday, and so my blog was just one of those 50,0
00. And nobody read it except for my gh I should say that m
y traffic did skyrocket and go up by 100 percent when she forwardedit to
my dad.
(Laughter) And then I got excited when it started getting tens of hits, and
then Istarted getting excited when it started getting dozens and then hu
ndreds and then thousands andthen millions. It started getting bigger an
d bigger and bigger. And then I got a phone call, and thevoice at the othe
r end of the line said,

ds totally fake.
(Laughter)
(Applause) Which African country do you want me to wireall my money t
o?
(Laughter) But it turns out, I jumped on a plane, and I ended up walking
a redcarpet between Sarah Silverman and Jimmy Fallon and Martha Ste
wart. And I went onstage toaccept a Webby award for Best Blog. And th
e surprise and just the amazement of that was onlyovershadowed by my
return to Toronto, when, in my inbox,
10 literary agents were waiting forme to talk about putting this into a bo
ok. Flash-forward to the next year and
been number one on the bestseller list for 20 straight weeks.
(Applause)
But look, I said I wanted to do three things with you today. I said I wante
d to tell you theAwesome story, I wanted to share with you the three As
of Awesome, and I wanted to leave youwith a closing thought. So let's ta
lk about those three As. Over the last few years, I haven't hadthat much
time to really think. But lately I have had the opportunity to take a step b
ack and askmyself:

also growmyself?
as three As. They are Attitude,Awareness and Authenticity. I'd love to jus
t talk about each one briefly.
So Attitude: Look, we're all going to get lumps, and we're all going to get
bumps. None of us canpredict the future, but we do know one thing abo
ut it and that's that it ain't gonna go accordingto plan. We will all have hi
gh highs and big days and proud moments of smiles on graduationstages
, father-daughter dances at weddings and healthy babies screeching in t
he delivery room,but between those high highs, we may also have some
lumps and some bumps too. It's sad, andit's not pleasant to talk about, b
ut your husband might leave you, your girlfriend could cheat, yourheada
ches might be more serious than you thought, or your dog could get hit
by a car on thestreet. It's not a happy thought, but your kids could get mi
xed up in gangs or bad scenes. Yourmom could get cancer, your dad coul
d get mean. And there are times in life when you will betossed in the wel
l, too, with twists in your stomach and with holes in your heart, and whe
n thatbad news washes over you, and when that pain sponges and soaks
in, I just really hope you feellike you've always got two choices. One, yo
u can swirl and twirl and gloom and doom forever, ortwo, you can grieve
and then face the future with newly sober eyes. Having a great attitude i
sabout choosing option number two, and choosing, no matter how diffic
ult it is, no matter whatpain hits you, choosing to move forward and mo
ve on and take baby steps into the future.
The second
ve the way that they seethe world, because they're seeing the world for
the first time. I love the way that they can stare ata bug crossing the side
walk. I love the way that they'll stare slack-jawed at their first baseball ga
mewith wide eyes and a mitt on their hand, soaking in the crack of the b
at and the crunch of thepeanuts and the smell of the hotdogs. I love the
way that they'll spend hours picking dandelions inthe backyard and putti
ng them into a nice centerpiece for Thanksgiving dinner. I love the way t
hatthey see the world, because they're seeing the world for the first tim
e. Having a sense ofawareness is just about embracing your inner three y
ear-old. Because you all used to be threeyears old. That three-year-old b
oy is still part of you. That three-year-old girl is still part of 're in
there. And being aware is just about remembering that you saw everyth
ing you've seenfor the first time once, too. So there was a time when it
was your first time ever hitting a string ofgreen lights on the way home f
rom work. There was the first time you walked by the open door ofa bak
ery and smelt the bakery air, or the first time you pulled a 20-dollar bill o
ut of your old jacketpocket and said,
The last
ory. Let's go all the wayback to 1932 when, on a peanut farm in Georgia,
a little baby boy named Roosevelt Grier wasborn. Roosevelt Grier, or Ros
ey Grier, as people used to call him, grew up and grew into a 300-pound,
six-foot-five linebacker in the NFL. He's number 76 in the picture. Here h
e is pictured withthe
L.A. Rams in the 1960s you did not wantto go up against. They were toug
h football players doing what they love, which was crushing skullsand se
parating shoulders on the football field. But Rosey Grier also had anothe
r passion. In hisdeeply authentic self, he also loved needlepoint.
(Laughter) He loved knitting. He said that it calmedhim down, it relaxed
him, it took away his fear of flying and helped him meet chicks. That's w
hat hesaid. I mean, he loved it so much that, after he retired from the NF
L, he started joining clubs. Andhe even put out a book called
r's Needlepoint for Men.
(Laughter)
(Applause) It's agreat cover. If you notice, he's actually needlepointing hi
s own face.
(Laughter)
And so what I love about this story is that Rosey Grier is just such an aut
hentic person, and that'swhat authenticity is all about. It's just about bei
ng you and being cool with that. And I think whenyou're authentic, you e
nd up following your heart, and you put yourself in places and situations
and in conversations that you love and that you enjoy. You meet people
that you like talking go places you've dreamt about. And you end
you end up following your heart and feelingvery fulfilled. So those are th
e three A's.
For the closing thought, I want to take you all the way back to my parent
s coming to Canada. Idon't know what it would feel like coming to a new
country when you're in your mid-20s. I don'tknow, because I never did it
, but I would imagine that it would take a great attitude. I wouldimagine
that you'd have to be pretty aware of your surroundings and appreciatin
g the smallwonders that you're starting to see in your new world. And I t
hink you'd have to be reallyauthentic, you'd have to be really true to you
rself in order to get through what you're beingexposed to.
I'd like to pause my TEDTalk for about 10 seconds right now, because yo
u don't get manyopportunities in life to do something like this, and my p
arents are sitting in the front row. So Iwanted to ask them to, if they don
't mind, stand up. And I just wanted to say thank you to youguys.
(Applause)
When I was growing up, my dad used to love telling the story of his first
day in Canada. And it's agreat story, because what happened was he got
off the plane at the Toronto airport, and he waswelcomed by a non-profi
t group, which I'm sure someone in this room runs.
(Laughter) And thisnon-profit group had a big welcoming lunch for all th
e new immigrants to Canada. And my dadsays he got off the plane and h
e went to this lunch and there was this huge spread. There wasbread, th
ere was those little, mini dill pickles, there was olives, those little white o
nions. There wasrolled up turkey cold cuts, rolled up ham cold cuts, rolle
d up roast beef cold cuts and little cubes ofcheese. There was tuna salad
sandwiches and egg salad sandwiches and salmon salad
re was lasagna, there was casseroles, there was brownies, there was but
ter tarts, and there waspies, lots and lots of pies. And when my dad tells
the story, he says,

(Laughter) I didn't know what was meat, what wasvegetarian. I was eatin
g olives with pie.
(Laughter) I just couldn't believe how many things you canget here.
(Laughter)
When I was five years old, my dad used to take me grocery shopping, an
d he would stare inwonder at the little stickers that are on the fruits and
vegetables. He would say,

t an apple here from South Africa. Canyou believe they've got a date fro
m Morocco?



uy the date, and we'd go home. Andwe'd actually take an atlas off the sh
elf, and we'd flip through until we found this mysteriouscountry. And wh
en we did, my dad would say,

it, put it in a truck, drove it all the way to the docks and then sailed it allt
he way across the Atlantic Ocean and then put it in another truck and dr
ove that all the way to atiny grocery store just outside our house, so the
y could sell it to us for 25 cents?


to be happy about.
When I stop to think about it, he's absolutely right. There are so many th
ings to be happy are the only species on the only life-giving ro
ck in the entire universe that we've ever seen,capable of experiencing so
many of these things. I mean, we're the only ones with architectureand
agriculture. We're the only ones with jewelry and democracy. We've got
airplanes, highwaylanes, interior design and horoscope signs. We've got
fashion magazines, house party scenes. Youcan watch a horror movie wi
th monsters. You can go to a concert and hear guitars 've go