0:00 Transcriber: Milena Ghandilyan Reviewer: Phi Yen Ngo Yep, that was me. Who would expect that?
0:09 That kid in that video would be giving you all a TED Talk today?
0:14 That was June 3rd, 2012. My third birthday and I was sitting right next to my brothers Ethan and Devin.
0:21 And if you couldn't tell, you had to have had a lot of patience to be near me at that age. And my brothers had as much patience as they could.
0:30 You see, my brother Devin, who you saw in blue, was the type of brother who would tease me a lot at a young age, and I'd give him the one two and I beat him up.
0:38 And then my other brother, who I actually did hit in the face was my brother Ethan.
0:43 And he'd take care of me all the time, and he'd even change my diapers.
0:47 And between us, he probably changed Devin's diapers, too.
0:52 And I still remember that day.
0:55 No. I'm joking, I do not, but I want to assure you that I did get karma for how I did act that day.
1:01 So this is a day I will never forget.
1:03 Now, I assure you, this is not a massacre.
1:06 This is my father giving me a haircut.
1:09 And he is way better off as an injury attorney than he ever will be a barber.
1:14 So please do not go to our house and try to get a haircut from him.
1:19 This was March 13th, 2013. And this this is my favorite moment of all.
1:26 This is when my brothers and I and my father decided to make a short film called Kiss the Ring, and I cannot show it for you today because it is a little too inappropriate for a TED Talk.
1:37 But man, it is the most phenomenal thing made on planet Earth.
1:45 Now you're all probably wondering, why am I telling this to you?
1:49 And it is because I want you to get to know about my family.
1:53 My father. He is the most hard-working, inspiring, loving person I have ever met.
1:59 And my mother. She is the most supportive person I've ever met.
2:04 I'd say the epitome of love.
2:07 But if you asked me to tell you about my brothers.
2:10 I don't think I'd be able to fully explain it.
2:13 See, the love I have for them is like this intense admiration.
2:18 My brother Devin. He is also very hard-working and inspiring and he is extremely independent.
2:24 In fact, I'd say he is a little too independent.
2:26 But everything I strive to be, my brother Ethan, well, he is the most loving person on this earth.
2:32 I am sure he could walk into any room and he can make you smile.
2:36 We should all smile a little more.
2:39 And I'm sorry, Devin, for going on a ramble about Ethan, but Ethan really is the glue to our family.
2:46 We make videos together, we act together, and he even makes short films for us and the family.
2:52 As you just saw, he so authentically believes in himself that he makes me believe in myself more.
2:59 And he is one of the best brothers I could ever ask for.
3:04 I truly do love him, and I'm sure if you got to know my brother, you would have gotten along quite well.
3:15 You see, the time has passed and my brother has now passed with time.
3:19 Five years to be exact.
3:21 When my brother died in a fatal car accident.
3:25 It was December 18th, 2021, and I was left confused.
3:30 How can somebody so loving and cheerful and have such a bright future ahead of him, just be gone off the face off the planet like that?
3:41 So I left crying in stillness and feared losing another brother.
3:49 And you might be wondering, why am I telling you this today?
3:53 And it is because I think grief is very misunderstood.
3:59 You see, today I want to tell you how perspectives are shaped by our societies.
4:06 And I want to tell you how that shapes how we respond to loss.
4:10 So I want to look at America's typical perspective and how Americans typically respond to loss and the possible consequences of that.
4:19 And then I want to show you that you have a choice, a choice to free you from this dangerous perspective painted onto you and the possible consequences of it.
4:32 The artist's way of thinking.
4:36 You see a little spoiler alert, but you see societies and cultures will always affect how we respond to anything.
4:44 Because of this, we must look into our own perspective. So I want to ask us today what type of perspective, what type of perspective do Americans typically have and how do we usually respond to loss?
4:55 Well, you see, as Americans, we believe in the American dream that through hard work and initiative, we can get anywhere we want, regardless of social status or background.
5:07 And because of this, we work and we work and we work for a future, and in turn, we sacrifice our present moment because of it.
5:16 This is a problem. Rich or poor, the perspective stays true.
5:22 The future becomes our present.
5:24 And now the work becomes our soul.
5:26 And this perspective does not pause for grief.
5:29 You see, the New York Life Foundation found that 58% of grieving, slash bereaved individuals felt expected to move on from their grief within three months, expected within three months.
5:44 And did you know the average bereavement leave for the United States is 3 to 5 days, 3 to 5 days for something that, on average takes a year or more?
5:56 See, my mother, after losing Ethan, had to return to work after two days.
6:03 Because of this, she suffered clinical depression.
6:07 As grief therapist Donna Schuurman puts it, “We live in a society that wants us to get over it and move on” Or as writer Kelly Jay Baker puts it, “We are all just cogs in a machine.” You see a perspective that tells us that grief can have a timeline, that it is a burden because it takes us away from work is a perspective.
6:34 That can lead to the worst type of grief possible, called Prolonged Grief Disorder, also used interchangeably with complicated grief, is the intense, persistent grief that lasts over 12 months, and it severely disrupts daily life.
6:50 And I want to see what suppression does to grief.
6:52 So let's all look at the brain.
6:56 You see the amygdala, which you can think of like an alarm is fast and automatic and it is your fear and stress response.
7:05 And of course, when we look at an alarm, we have to look at what can turn an alarm off, right?
7:09 So let's look at the prefrontal cortex.
7:12 And this is your brain region responsible for executive functions such as logic and reasoning and emotional processing.
7:20 I want to refer to these two things today as the low road and the high road.
7:25 And you could think of the low road as the reactive path and the high road as the reflective one.
7:31 The low road is essentially when you're not processing as much of your emotions and your amygdala is overactive.
7:38 And the high road is when you are processing your emotions via the prefrontal cortex.
7:43 These are what I'm going to speak about in the context, in the context of today.
7:48 Okay. You see a peer reviewed fMRI study published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine scan the brains of individuals with complicated grief and individuals without it.
7:59 So non bereaved individuals and they show them death related images.
8:03 And what they found actually was that the complicated grief groups brains lit up in ways that simply do not happen.
8:10 And I'm focusing on the amygdala here.
8:13 You see grief, grief in this context, when the amygdala is overactive means that processing is not happening in this scenario, right?
8:25 So what happens is the high road is offline.
8:29 And the American perspective typically keeps people stuck on the low road because we are sacrificing our presence for our future.
8:38 And when grief arrives in the presence, we are told to push it aside because it is a burden and we do.
8:45 So the alarm keeps ringing.
8:48 And I want you to remember this about the typical American perspective today.
8:53 That's when we get off of work.
8:56 We do not stop thinking about work and when we have time to grieve.
9:01 We do not even think about grieving.
9:03 So I want you guys to remember this. So can you guys all say it with me today, please?
9:08 Okay. You ready? Even when we do not work.
9:12 Even when we do not work.
9:14 We still think about work.
9:16 Think about work.
9:18 And even when we have time to grieve.
9:21 We have time to grieve.
9:22 We don't even think about grieving.
9:25 We don't think about grieving.
9:27 You see, the question is, how do we get to the high road from suppression to meaning making, from reactiveness to reflectiveness?
9:38 Because we cannot change our system today.
9:40 But what we can change is our perspective, and our perspectives can change everything.
9:46 So let me show you the way out.
9:49 You see, the typical grieving individual today lives in lies, does not live in the present, not in their own unique way for the dream.
9:59 But the artist, well, they live in honesty?
10:02 They live in the present moment, in their unique way for the hope of the future, you see.
10:08 These two perspectives affect how we respond to loss.
10:12 One leads to suffering and the other one leads to healing.
10:16 And I want to juxtapose these two ideas for us today, because I feel like grief is a very misunderstood emotion.
10:22 You see, grief is the natural, personal response we feel to loss.
10:27 But why are we losing that?
10:30 I feel like it is not natural anymore because it is something we could put a timeline on.
10:35 It is not personal. It is now a burden that takes us away from the dream.
10:40 And the artist has the hope for the future.
10:43 But do not get it confused with the dream. You see, the dream is something that is not bad in principle, but it is highly idealized and it is not personalized to the person who is dreaming.
10:55 It is truly a dream kept dreaming and it is a nightmare to get there.
11:00 A process that most people get stuck in, but the artist lives in the hope for the future.
11:08 The hope being beauty to immerse yourself in experience and do something with the beauty that is in front of us right now, at this very moment.
11:19 They do not get lost in the constant cycle of work, because right now is what matters.
11:25 And because of this, the artist sees grief as a process, not as a timeline or a burden, but an experience garnering us closer to the human condition.
11:38 You see, The Artist's Way is high.
11:41 Is the high road lived out?
11:43 It is processing in real time.
11:47 So I want to show you a great example of an artist who use art to heal.
11:54 And his name is Edouard Monk, and he is a Norwegian expressionist who was plagued by his anxiety, depression, hallucinations, alcoholism.
12:05 I mean, you name it. And he suffered from the early deaths of his mother and sister. He suffered a mental breakdown in 1908, and his doctor gave him art as occupational therapy.
12:18 And he took it and he took all of it.
12:22 You see, his original paintings were very sad, but he can now translate his psychological demons onto paper and canvas and reclaim his narrative.
12:33 He was given the resource.
12:35 But the perspective is what truly matters here, because it is not what he did, but why and how he did it.
12:41 He created honestly, he did so in the present moment, and he put his emotions in honesty on to canvas.
12:49 And he did so in his own unique way, which was through painting.
12:55 And he even started having the hope for the future, the beauty as he started healing, you could see more pastoral scenes and him painting nature.
13:07 His color palettes got more brighter and more optimistic.
13:12 He did not use art as a distraction, but rather a tool to process.
13:18 And I believe that is what a lot of us gets wrong today.
13:23 And the general idea of perspective, and I am a typical and a great example of that.
13:33 You see, after my brother passed away, I missed school for an entire month, and even when I missed school, I could not stop thinking about the work I had to do.
13:43 I was 12 years old, 12 years old, and I could not stop thinking of the work I had to do.
13:47 Isn't that crazy? And I used that also as a coping mechanism, because when I wasn't thinking about him, I was thinking about my work.
13:56 And by God, I was. Yes, yes, let me do my homework. That is not true.
14:01 but it was.
14:06 He's probably laughing in heaven right now, but it was a way to focus less on him because I was suffering and my perspective made me the future now and the present later.
14:22 I lied. I lied about my situation.
14:25 I couldn't even talk to anybody in my family.
14:28 And when I said I did, I really couldn't vulnerably, and I couldn't even grieve my own way.
14:35 I was breaking myself down every single day because I couldn't cry like my mom or break down like my strong father.
14:46 My perspective delayed my healing, and I want to show you how I truly got healed.
14:53 So let me address the elephant in the room.
14:55 You might all be wondering, why did this kid bring a rug, a broom, and a trash can onto stage.
15:03 And I want to show you.
15:05 This is because a good friend of mine, Jordan, once told me that if you sweep everything under the rug, eventually when you want to move houses, you'll have to face it again.
15:20 And that is exactly what I did.
15:22 I fell into the most common trap.
15:24 Ian, come on, let’s sweep this under the rug. Let’s miss school for a month. Let’s distract ourselves with technology.
15:31 And the rug became the future that I pointed to.
15:35 Yes, this is everything.
15:39 And I promised myself.
15:40 As long as I never lift that corner, Ian.
15:44 I will never have to face my problems again.
15:50 But I lied, and you see? Then my soul cried out and it realized the most simple but most meaningful and impactful thing.
16:01 And it was that healing starts with honesty, and healing starts with now.
16:07 So I lifted that rug and by God, it was ugly.
16:11 I had to take out piece by piece at a time, and sometimes I couldn't even take out multiple pieces because I couldn't process it.
16:19 But don't get it wrong, I was not distracting myself.
16:22 I was not lying. I was rather looking at it and say, yes, I have to process this.
16:28 And sometimes I had to put pieces back, of course, but I still took it out and I knew I had to heal some way.
16:36 So I started writing poetry, and I even started talking to friends about my problems in a vulnerable state.
16:44 And I got a therapist for a little while.
16:49 And the most important thing is I started grieving in my own unique way.
16:55 You see, as Rick Rubin, a famous creative and famous music producer, said “The audience always comes second for the audience” and he's talking about art.
17:08 And this is so true because if art is not made to be itself, then it cannot be great and neither can healing.
17:16 Healing cannot work. If I try to heal like you, I couldn't heal like my mother.
17:23 I couldn't heal like my father. I had to heal in my own unique way.
17:27 And only once I started writing honestly could I start grieving honestly.
17:32 And it took me to be in the present moment with full honesty.
17:36 To recognize that grief isn't something that you could just sweep away.
17:41 It is a process that takes time.
17:46 So we have to stop lying to ourselves.
17:51 And you see, you all might be wondering, what if I am not an artist?
17:59 But I assure you, you are all artists.
18:01 You are an artist, you are an artist. You are all artists.
18:04 Everybody on this stage aerospace engineers, poets, mathematicians and janitors because it is a way of doing things, not necessarily what you do.
18:15 You do not have to write the best poetry or paint the best paintings.
18:20 You just have to do the most honest form of whatever you are doing in the present moment.
18:29 And I am not offering you art as medicine.
18:33 I'm not saying if you paint a painting, you will automatically be healed.
18:38 I'm offering you a posture, a way of being that makes getting stuck much harder in the first place, because you cannot get stuck where you keep moving.
18:49 You cannot get stuck where you keep moving.
18:54 You see, the people who develop prolonged grief disorder are typically the ones who lie are typically the ones who are not living in the moments, are not giving themselves self times to grieve.
19:11 And it is simple and it is partially the system's fault.
19:16 But we do have a choice.
19:19 So when death comes knocking at your door and you want to sweep everything under the rug, do not I challenge you to start writing or doing poetry or painting or doing something to process your emotions.
19:37 I challenge you that when you are not working to stop thinking about work, and when you have time to grieve, to actually grieve and be grateful for the life that that person lived who lost. I challenge you to see the beauty that is in front of you and unleash the artist that is inside of you, to the canvas of this world.
19:58 Yes, I challenge you to see the beauty in this present moment.
20:04 And it is so simple, but simple is lost and the artist sees the simple and simple is beautiful.
20:17 So I want you to remember this about the artist's perspective, and I want you to say it with me one last time.
20:25 Okay. Can we all do that?
20:28 Okay. I will live authentically.
20:32 Authentically.
20:33 Yes, I will live in honesty.
20:37 I will live in the present moment.
20:40 In the present moment.
20:43 And I will see the beauty that is in front of me right now.
20:49 Right. Right now. Right now.
20:51 Thank you.
20:56 I lifted the rug!
