Translator: Meng Chew Keane Leow Reviewer: Lisa Thompson
Good afternoon, everyone!
Thanks for bearing with us.
I'm very happy to be here, very honored to be here.
I'm here to share with you a story about appreciation,
about why I started a movement about appreciation,
and what that movement has taught me -
what amazing things that it has taught me.
It was a few years ago that I started this movement.
Before that, I was just completing my graduate studies,
my master's degree in educational psychology.
During that time, I came to learn a little bit about the world
and how it's becoming, you know,
a little bit more ugly, a little bit worse.
And this world that we live in is becoming increasingly neoliberal,
and psychology is contributing to that.
So, I just threw out a word here called neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism is a big word.
What does it mean?
It's basically this idea that your lives, my life,
should be increasingly regulated by this thing called a free market.
In such a neoliberal world,
governments, social organizations should be deregulated or minimized.
Individuals like you and me become reduced to economic units.
To function efficiently as economic units, we need to take self-responsibility.
Now, I know it sounds very technical, but bear with me.
I'll come to a good point.
So, in light of this,
psychology then contributes
because it focuses a lot about self-responsibility.
Under this neoliberal regime, we increasingly don't need our community.
That's what it means.
Now, here's the challenge:
I find a neoliberal regime that we are increasingly living in
misses the point about a lot of things.
First of all, the free market is never really free.
There are people behind a free market that are actors in a free market,
and some of them have more power than others.
Secondly,
if we are to say that we are always and solely responsible for our lives,
we are also saying that the rich became rich on their own
and the poor are poor because they are not responsible enough.
To me, I reject this; I don't buy this.
This is not right.
I guess, most tragically, what happens is
if we're all self-responsible economic units,
then there really is no need for community;
there really is no need for our stories.
We don't need to talk to each other.
So, with that in mind, I was thinking,
"Well, wait a second. This cannot be.
I am a psychologist. I cannot be a part of this.
I cannot be perpetuating this.
Something needs to happen.
Our stories matter, our community matters."
So, at that same time,
technology was getting pretty crazy.
We increasingly talk to each other in abbreviated spaces and social media.
So,
there remains very little - very few spaces
where we can actually reflect and tell our stories
because there isn't space.
There isn't space in an Insta Story;
there isn't space in a tweet or a Facebook post.
And these opportunities become increasingly compressed.
And on top of that, I myself, in my graduate study,
felt like I needed an appreciative space
because as a graduate student,
I remembered being criticized all the time.
Everything I did wasn't right.
Every time I was about to graduate, I didn't graduate.
So I talked to myself.
We need our stories to be heard,
and we need to appreciate each other a little bit more.
So, it was with neoliberalism,
social media, and my own graduate experience
that I decided we need a space where we can talk to each other
about our stories and appreciate our lives,
take stock of our accomplishments, because those things matter.
Our stories are the bedrock of our community.
So, I started this movement called "The Best of You."
How I started this is simply by asking people
to answer this very complex question called "Who is the best of you?"
At that time, when I asked this question on social media,
I was worried that nobody would understand this question
and nobody would care enough to understand this question,
or even answer this question.
Well, thankfully, today those fears have been put to rest
because we have so far - five years along -
received at least 23,000 stories.
But what's more important than the number of stories
is what stories have taught me in return.
An appreciation became a catalyst for our stories.
It has opened up so much more to my life
and to the people who worked behind the movement.
I want to share with you
these four lessons I've learned through the movement.
The first one is,
appreciation provides a space for negativity,
a necessary space for negativity."
Now, you'll be asking me why.
Hey, appreciation is supposed to be a positive thing, right?
But guess what.
When we receive our stories,
the most profound ones tend to begin at a low point.
And you know this,
because when you are motivated,
it's normally sparked because something bad has happened
or you want to remediate something.
So it normally starts at the low point,
and it goes up.
So, I want to illustrate this point further
with one of our key stories that we've featured on the movement.
That's Patrick.
Patrick never had a good childhood.
He came from a broken family.
He committed crimes at a very young age.
He beat up people. He never did well in school.
So, that was his low point.
He felt that that was always his trajectory
until he met someone, someone who believed in him.
Then that's when his life became better.
Patrick now gives back to the community.
He's a community worker.
At the same time, he teaches delinquent students.
The point of Patrick's story
is that a lot of motivational stories
begin with this structure.
The negative part is extremely valuable.
And in this day and age, when we are often asked to be positive
at the expense of censoring our negative feelings
this reminds us that our authentic experience requires this negative space.
The second lesson I want to share with you
is that appreciation has helped me
take a look at the diversity around us.
So it helps me see the things that we don't see,
or the things that we refuse to see,
or the things that society tells us we shouldn't see.
It helps us see those things.
Let me share with you the story to illustrate this point.
This is Ammar.
Ammar is a deaf dancer.
So, yes, you heard correctly: he is a deaf dancer.
He has impairments in hearing,
but he breakdances in a breakdancing group.
He uses some of what he can hear to form the beats.
No one else has this experience but Ammar.
Ammar's story let us know
that disabilities are not lack of abilities;
rather, disabilities are diverse abilities.
He has helped us see through our own stereotypical lens of disabilities
that there is so much more variety in our humanity.
Mr. Mohsin
is the only editor-in-chief
of the only Bangladeshi newspaper in Southeast Asia.
His contribution to our society is to let us see
the thousands, the ten of thousands, the hundreds of thousands
[of] Bangladeshi workers within our midst, among our midst,
that they have contributed significantly to our economy,
to our culture, and our society,
but yet don't receive the same type of treatment as we do.
His newspaper allows us to take a better look
at what we should do to be a more inclusive society,
to see that there is much more diversity than what we take for granted.
So, appreciation is powerful
because it opens up our sights to these things.
Isn't that amazing?
The third lesson is this:
not only does it open our sights
to things that we don't see or we take for granted,
it can bring people together; it can unite people.
And in an interesting story,
Ami and Allison, you see in the background here,
is a story we featured last year.
When I was about to feature the story, I was thinking,
"Hey, you know, what is the impact?
What will the impact of the story be?"
I couldn't quite figure it out,
because Ami and Allison's story was just about their friendship.
All it was was Ami, a Muslim Malay woman, hanging out with a Chinese woman
in Malaysia.
The entire story is about how they go and eat,
how they go watch a movie,
how they spend their time together.
In one month, it ignited a national conversation,
on top of a three-million viewership on YouTube.
The national conversation was this:
we want this; Malaysia wants this.
This is the Malaysia we're looking for.
Friendship is the basis of our community.
And it brought people together to say, "Hey, we want this Malaysia back,
not the racialized one that we currently live in."
So, what that taught me was this:
appreciation can bring people together.
But more than bringing people together,
it can bring people together to effect change,
and this is the fourth lesson I've learned.
I want to share with you this story.
This illustrates my last point.
This is Siti Rahayu,
and where she is right now is Buku Jalanan Chow Kit.
For those of you who don't know what "buku jalanan" means,
it means mobile library.
Chow Kit, for those of you who don't know,
I am sure most of you do, but for those of you who don't,
it is the area in metropolitan KL that has the highest level of poverty.
Many of the inhabitants in Chow Kit
are sex workers, refugees or undocumented workers.
Their children do not have access to education, for whatever reason.
So, Siti Rahayu is the founder of Buku Jalanan Chow Kit.
It's more than a mobile library;
it's a street school that teaches them on two nights of the week
social skills and basic education.
The children who do not have access have access to a school like that
so that they can pick up social skills.
When we featured this story, it became viral within a month.
The videos -
we received at least one million views within the month,
but more than that,
it galvanized communities across countries -
Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia -
to pour in support for Buku Jalanan Chow Kit.
From a lack of volunteer teachers,
they now have a wait list of volunteer teachers.
Medical clinics around the area provided medical support.
Soup kitchens provided the children and the families of the children
free meals on the nights of their studying.
Two years down the road,
they have now moved from the street to a permanent space.
So, this tells me -
and this is what I've learned throughout this movement -
that appreciation -
the stories that come up when we appreciate other people
can make great changes.
So, as I end off my talk today,
I'm humbled;
I'm always humbled to be a part of this movement
because as the stories come in,
I have learned that the stories are what build a community.
They're what humanizes us.
So, as we walk away in a world that becomes more neoliberal
and treats you more like economic units,
I want you all to do us all a favor.
Take 15 minutes out of your life to ask yourself this question:
"Who is the best of you?"
Extend that question out
to someone you love or someone who is important to you.
Who is the best of you?
Because you never know what impact that may have on someone else,
and more than that,
because our humanity, our lives, and our community depends on it.
Thank you.
(Applause)