Translator: Robert Deliman Reviewer: Denise RQ
I love being happy.
It's probably one of my favorite things to do.
I mean who doesn't love being happy?
But... I'm not happy all the time.
And that's completely normal. You can't expect to be happy all the time.
Lots of people seem to think that happiness is some magical place
that you'll drive to, and then you'll be happy forever.
You'll reach this eternal state of happiness.
But I hate to break it to you, some of us won't walk through that door
with a silver platter containing your happiness
because happiness is just an emotion.
And there are three other major emotions that we go through every day.
There's anger, there's surprise, and there's sadness.
We go through different variations of these in day-to-day life.
With everything that we do, we're feeling different emotions.
Our faces are actually super cool.
We have about 7,000 different facial expressions.
Isn't that awesome? Our faces can do that.
We don't even think about it, it just happens.
What's also super cool is the fact that when I'm looking at you,
I'm looking at your facial expressions.
I don't have to think about it.
I'm just talking to you and analyzing what you're feeling,
analyzing if you're happy, if you're in the back bored,
if you are a little tired.
And I think that's super cool. It's like a superpower.
When I was little, I was a bit of an odd kid.
I didn't know which friends I had,
so I'd just walk around my school field and I'd just watch; I'd watch everyone.
I'd watch the teachers; I'd watch the students.
I'd look at their body language; I'd look at their facial expressions;
and I'd try to figure out exactly what they were feeling.
So that way, if they got into an argument,
I'd use my own facial expressions and body language to try to soothe them.
And we all do that to a certain extent. It's a superpower that we all have.
It's just that some of us need to develop it a bit more.
Emotional awareness is one of the bases of socializing.
And socializing is super important in our life.
We have to know if the other person that we are talking to
is feeling uncomfortable.
We have to know how we are feeling so that we can articulate that.
All that is a basic part of socializing.
And it's something that we all need.
Socializing is a part of everything that we do.
It's not just going to parties,
but socializing is saying hello to that person
that's selling stuff outside the supermarket.
It's waving to that person good morning.
It's all socializing.
And unfortunately, socializing is becoming easier and easier to avoid.
So, for example, let's pretend I'm really hungry, and I want some food.
Normally, I'd go to the grocery store;
I'd pick up some food, I'd pick up some snacks,
or I'd go to a restaurant and order something to eat.
But now I'm like, "Eh, I don't really want to leave my house.
I'll just pick up the phone, and call someone,
and then have food delivered to me."
That's fine. You're still having that vocal conversation with someone.
It's just you're not having that same face-to-face interaction.
But, I mean, I love having food delivered to my house.
I don't even have to put on pants.
And that's great, but then...
what if I don't actually like being on the phone?
Sometimes, I get really nervous, and I'm just like, "Eh... eh..."
I don't really know what I want any more.
So, if anything, I'll try to avoid being on the phone as well.
Oh, I know: I want food, I don't want to talk on the phone,
I don't want to leave my house; I'll just order pizza online.
You can do that now.
You don't have to see anyone or talk to anyone.
All you have to do is click a button; and pizza appears at your house.
It's like magic. But then... you're not talking to anyone.
Other than to throw money out to them and take your food.
And that's great because you don't have to put on pants;
but you're forgetting how to socialize.
OK, maybe I'm taking it a little too far.
There are still other places that we socialize.
We socialize at school; we socialize when we're trying to get a job.
So at school, you talk to your teachers;
you have to articulate yourself to the other students; you make friends.
And it's all super fun, but nowadays,
it's becoming more and more easy to not even have to go to school.
You can just take an online course.
Again, don't have to put on pants.
Why is everyone not wearing pants these days?
Actually, I saw a photo of someone on a job interview;
and they were just wearing their blazer and their shirt and no pants.
Like seriously, it's a job.
Normally, you'd have to go to their office and be like,
"Hello, my name is Mikaela, and I'd like a job, please."
But now you just have to be like, "Eh... yes, Skype interview.
Yes, I'm totally wearing pants right now." But you're not.
(Laughter)
And sometimes I wonder: if we never have to leave the house,
and we don't have to put on pants, what if we forget how to wear pants?
What if we don't remember any more? And that's how I view socializing.
We don't have to socialize as much anymore,
which means we're forgetting how to do it.
And then, when you do have to socialize, you become kind of socially awkward.
You are a bit of an awkward turtle. And that's OK. I mean awkwardness is fine.
I'm awkward too. But it gets to the point where it's social anxiety.
And social anxiety is one of the effects and one of the causes of depression.
Depression levels are rising hugely;
and social anxiety really isn't helping.
So it's something that my grandmother never had to think about.
It's something that my mother, maybe, would've thought about once or twice.
But now it's something I have to think about a lot.
It's something I have to go and talk to my friends about
to find out if they are OK.
It's something that I have to try to help my friends see
if their depression medication is working or not.
And it's really worrying being a friend and not knowing how to help.
So I did what most teenagers do: I googled it.
And then I would Google 'depression' and statistics would come up like,
"The average age of depression is between 14 and 15 years old."
And that's kind of scary. I'm 16 years old.
That means that people younger than me are already super depressed.
And that's crazy. I don't want my friends to be depressed.
I don't want to have to deal with something like that.
OK. So I thought, OK; who knows where this fact came from?
Who knows if it's actually true?
So I went to another one, and it said,
"75% of girls have low self-esteem,
and a further 75% of those self-harm."
And that's terrifying.
That means many of my friends here would not be happy with themselves.
And I think they are all amazing; but what if they don't know that?
Again, I wasn't sure
if I could actually believe these facts and statistics,
but even if I could, it scares me.
I don't want to have to believe them,
I don't want to live in a world where everyone's upset.
So I started thinking, what is it that I can do?
How is it that we can be more social? Where do we learn things?
Well, you first learn things at home. You learn things with your family.
Even before you're born, your mother's voice is soothing to you.
Even when you're in her tummy, you can still hear her;
you still hear her emotions; and you start to feel some of them.
And then, when you're born,
your parents teach you how to walk and how to talk.
You learn to crawl; you learn all sorts of amazing things.
All parents want a happy baby.
They want a bubbly baby that'll be smiling all the time.
And that's great.
So they'll throw lots of toys at this baby to keep him constantly entertained.
And as lovely as that is,
babies don't really need to be constantly entertained.
They do not need an iPad. I'm sorry, babies don't need iPads.
If you leave them alone, they'll be entertained with their hand.
You know, "Ooh, fingers! These are fun!"
But if you always give them things to do,
they won't learn to entertain themselves.
They're always going to be bored.
And it's the same with emotions.
If your baby's crying, sometimes it's just because they're sad.
And sometimes they need to learn to be sad for a little while.
It's an emotion that they have to experience at some point.
Sometimes when they are crying, you just need to let them wait a while.
You need them to learn to self-soothe.
But that becomes really complicated,
when your baby's crying, and you don't know what's wrong.
You don't know if it's something that you can do to help.
Maybe they need their diaper changed.
Maybe they're sick.
And you don't want to just leave them there.
So I'd better leave the whole parenting thing alone.
I'm not really an expert on that.
So then I thought, "OK, where else do I learn things?"
And I sat for a Monday morning, and I was like, "Where do I learn things?"
Then in the middle of a Philosophy class I was like,
wait, I learn things at school.
Here I am now: you learn amazing things.
You learn geography, you learn history, you learn biology.
You learn not so amazing things like math-sorry, not a math person.
But why is it that we don't learn socializing?
Socializing is super important. It's just as important as history.
So why don't we learn it?
Why is it that we don't have a class that we go to,
and we just have 55 minutes to speak to someone,
just have a conversation with them,
just talk straight to them and come up with cool things to talk about,
come up with a way to try to avoid all these awkward pauses in conversations?
And at the end of the year, you have talked to a bunch of people,
you've made super awesome friends, and you won't be socially awkward.
Conversations will come super easily.
But then I also remembered
sitting in a class at my old school called Citizenship.
It's great to learn to be a good citizen,
but teenagers don't take it seriously.
I mean, honestly, they'll just go and be doodling.
They don't actually think that it's something important.
So maybe that's not such a good idea.
I've been talking to you about what's not a good idea.
But what is a good idea?
What do I want you to do?
I want you to socialize.
I want you to make friends with a random person on a bus.
I want you to go and talk to someone that you've never talked to before.
No one is born sociable. It's something that we all need to learn.
And if we do, then we'll become more confident with ourselves,
we'll be able to express ourselves,
we'll be able to have a better communication with everyone.
And that's super important,
because when you stop being more confident with yourself,
you will be more confident around other people.
And when you're confident with others, you're more confident with yourself.
And then you're happier. And that's the key to happily socializing.
(Applause)