Translator: Chryssa R. Takahashi Reviewer: Riaki Poništ
My name is Shannon,
and my story begins with my maternal American grandfather,
a colonel in the US Army,
who, for a period in his career, was stationed in Japan
many years after WWII on one side,
and my paternal Japanese grandmother,
who lived through and survived the Tokyo bombings
that flattened her city to devastation on the other.
And when I mean "devastated,"
I mean her family, her friends, everything gone.
Decades later I was born to their respective children,
an American mother and a Japanese father,
and much to the surprise of the Japanese doctors,
I was born looking like this.
(Laughter)
I can't imagine how hard it must have been for my grandmother
to look into the blue eyes of her grandchild
and see the reflection of what used to be the enemy.
And yet for a moment, history stood still for her.
And all that had been was born anew in this face, my face,
both Japanese and American,
a face that she loved with completely full abandon.
Because some things in this life rise above even the deepest cuts in our souls.
Give me a second.
I was born already going against the grain,
into an incredibly conformist culture,
where the saying "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down"
is inherently ingrained within the psyche of the culture.
And I heard that you Greeks have that as well in your culture.
This is a picture of me in central Tokyo with my Japanese neighbour friend.
Clearly, I am the nail that sticks out.
But I was also born to an incredibly loving and smart mother
who knew what it took to survive and fit in.
And she did everything she could, working so hard to make sure
that every child, every family knew exactly who I was
before I ever stepped foot into school.
Inviting them over, offering cake and ice cream to the older kids,
all to assure
that they would look out for me and I wouldn't be bullied.
And to the credit of my courageous mother and those in my small neighbourhood,
I was accepted, I was protected, dare I say it, I was loved,
though I was the nail that stuck out.
It went against every norm of society,
this white child and her white mother, the "gaijin" as they called us,
and the Japanese father,
living amongst them in the local way, in the local language.
It took me years to be able to look back and see acceptance
where I only initially saw the failings and flaws as a child.
But now in this moment, from my vantage point in midlife,
I can look back and I can see the remarkable acceptance I was given,
by those who chose to look past the strict norms of society
and see me.
And because of this, because of them,
I am just as Japanese as I am American no matter what I look like on the outside.
And I love both my countries deeply
because it runs in my blood and in my soul.
At the age of seven, my parents told me we have to move to the United States,
and this time, I look like everyone else on the outside.
But I had a funny accent.
I sounded like some weird dubbed over movie.
They thought I was putting it on.
And I had to attend English as a second language course.
And I was that weird kid
that considered squid guts and curry rice to be an exciting meal
instead of the typically American hamburgers and hot dogs.
I was not the all-American girl.
I have spent my life trying to find my place in the world
as a third culture kid,
trying to find prescribed acceptance
that would offer me a defined place and a defined role.
I have lived in more places than I can count in my lifetime.
All two places so culturally different,
even within the boundaries of the United States.
Places like Seattle, Washington,
that displayed beautiful multi-ethnic communities
without a second thought,
to places in the American South, like North Carolina,
where deep historical racial divides still strongly remain.
And I have learned how to survive and adapt in each new place.
But I still longed for identity,
for some societally accepted purpose,
never knowing what that really was.
In my 20s,
I decided to take on archaeology for my undergraduate studies.
And that took me to Jerusalem for a year to study Second Temple period history.
And it was then,
during the second uprising of violence called the Intifada,
where I experienced the painful clash between Israelis and Palestinians
for the first time.
And at that point I knew
I couldn't go back to the United States and live a normal life
but I had to give up my degree,
move back to the region and help those in any way I could,
much to the surprise and complete freak out of my parents, I have to say.
I spent nearly a decade in the region trying to find my place,
in a region where all the cultures and religions are so vastly different
from my own.
Trying to immerse myself fully,
never accepting that it would not be possible,
I worked with victims of terror,
in policy analysis, and in conflict management.
But I am not going to talk more about my time there
because I've long since moved on from the ten years I spent
crossing borders, witnessing the suffering,
trying to make sense of a conflict for myself and for others.
I've learned with age and experience
that some stories, conflicts and histories run so deep and so personal,
no one from the outside can solve it or change it.
It has to begin from within the people themselves.
So here I am in my 30s,
having given up my degree, having moved to a region of conflict,
having taken on a unique experience that I called a career for a decade,
and now it was all coming to an end.
I had no idea how to change course, where to go, what to do.
And I remember sitting on the floor in Amman, Jordan,
in my friend's apartment in the dark, one night with a single candle lit,
at the greatest low of my life,
feeling like there was no way out.
I was up against the wall.
I was out of hope; I was out of money; I was out of ideas.
My friend, seeing my state of need said, "You know what,
why don't I give you a ticket to Geneva, Switzerland, where I live,
so you can rest, think, and get your feet back under you."
I remember flying out of Amman,
seeing the ground getting smaller and smaller beneath me
and crying from fear
knowing everything I had built for a decade was now totally gone.
I know some of you in this audience today know what that feels like,
where you put your blood, sweat and tears into something
and it crumbles beneath you in a second, gone.
I had to pivot quickly, I had no choice.
My time in Geneva had me taking on corporate sustainability jobs
through amazing friends who saw my diverse experience and valued it,
and they sent me to Africa to work with coffee growers in Rwanda and Burundi
to try to raise their level of life and to be able to grow better.
And surprisingly, my ability to be dropped anywhere in the world,
to find my way across cultures and places, and figure my way around
was actually an asset.
For the first time in my life, I wasn't being hammered down,
I was being lifted up.
During my time in Geneva, I met my husband,
my precious, wonderful, beautiful husband.
And he saw something in me and my crazy experience,
and after a whirlwind year, we were married.
And he always said to me, "Trust your brain, Shannon."
When everyone else doubted me, when no one believed me
he would always come back to that, "Trust your brain.
What do you want to do? What do you want to be?
You have a moment of peace in your life right now.
What do you want to give to the world?"
I'd always been ashamed that I hadn't completed my degree,
my first degree.
Because society still defines success as higher education.
And it's not because I was stupid or lazy,
it was because I followed my dreams, my passions,
and what I thought was right.
But I wanted to prove to myself that I could.
So at the age of 33, I re-enrolled
in the local English-speaking university in Geneva, Switzerland,
this time to complete my degree in psychology.
Because my time in the Middle East had gotten me interested
in what makes people fundamentally tick,
"How can people live side by side, so similar, and yet so vastly different?"
I was the oldest one on campus. It was a really weird experience.
But I didn't care
because I got a second chance and I revelled in it.
Through my experience in psychology,
I came to see how much I love to understand how the brain works
and the physical structures and molecular processes
that underlie why we do what we do as humans.
And this led me to neuroscience.
And this is when everyone told me, "You're out of your freaking mind.
You're 34, you have no background in science or biology at all,
and you think you are going to take on neuroscience.
This is a completely ridiculous notion.
No one can do that".
But my husband, undaunted, gave me the bungee cord to jump.
And we decided to uproot our lives and move between Geneva and London
so that I could pursue my master's
at one of the best universities in the world for neuroscience,
called University College London.
And this is when I say UCL
and everybody says "UCLA?"
And I'm like "No, UCL,"
because the British aren't really good at promoting themselves.
But this university ranks up there with MIT and Harvard,
and you can imagine how difficult it was in my first few months.
I cried silently many nights in our apartment,
trying to read scientific journals for the first time.
It was like a totally new language for me. It was like learning Greek.
(Laughter)
And I am sitting there going, "What am I doing?"
And my colleagues must have thought that I was a joke, I'm sure.
I'm pretty sure I know that that's a fact.
These guys are career scientists who have spent their life doing this,
and my presence was almost an insult to them.
They didn't know what to do with me.
But there were professors and post-docs who saw something in me once again
and pushed me.
One of those guys, Dr. Andrew Batchelor - and I hope he is watching -
he taught me that science is not about having the perfect result
or having the right pedigree.
But it was about learning how to think through a problem.
And boy, did I know how to think through problems.
And he also taught me to think not just with rigour but with imagination
and to not judge myself by the standards of convention,
but to just try.
Again, he was somebody within the establishment
who saw me and gave me the anchor from which to jump.
I graduated that year, top three in my class with distinction.
And that was because of countless others; it wasn't because of me.
It was because of countless others that scaffolded me throughout that year,
protecting my differences,
allowing me to rise in this next piece of my life that I wanted to pursue.
I didn't imagine I would ever do my undergrad, much less my master's,
or now my PhD, which was a lifelong dream that I wanted to pursue
but didn't allow myself to believe I could do.
And during that year
I met an American, Harvard-bred professor named Jason Rihel; he is crazy.
And he is unconventional, and he is brilliant.
And I went to him with a project I wanted to pursue.
And you have to remember,
in scientific PhDs, you don't present the project you want to do,
you join a program, and you do what they tell you to do.
But he didn't kick me out of his office and say, "Get out of here.
Who do you think you are? Your CV is not right.
You don't have the right background. I need trained people to do this."
No. He took me at face value.
He heard me, and he said, "Hey, let's go for it".
And he and my second supervisor, an amazing mentor,
this guy who has really brought me up in science, Tom Hawkins.
They both rode the wave with me,
which has resulted in some incredible discoveries,
like this one.
This is a potentially new cell type that we found -
we co-discovered with a lab in Germany -
in the brain of zebra fish,
that we believe also exists in mammals, including humans,
and is likely involved in clearing your brain
and may have a role in neuroimmunology.
They are probably working in your brain right now as we speak.
Some exciting things are happening in our field and from our lab
and watch this space.
We are really excited with what's to come.
But my point of being here today
is not to tell you how crazy my life has been,
how exciting my life has been,
but I came here today for you.
To ask you the question, "Who are you in my story?"
To illustrate the point, what comes to mind
is my favourite movie of all time, a Steven Spielberg blockbuster:
"Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade".
To set the scene, Indiana Jones is this incredible adventurer
who is now sitting with his father, who's been shot,
and he has to save his life,
and the only thing that can save his life is this chalice,
this holy water, this holy grail.
And he has to go through a series of obstacles
to be able to reach that chalice.
And he's running through the caverns,
and suddenly he stops short at this abyss,
and you see the stones falling.
And you feel with him in the moment
where he sees the door on the other side of that abyss.
And he says, "Oh my God, there is no way I can jump and make that."
And just then, you pan over to Sean Connery, who's playing his father,
and he closes his eyes and he says,
"Son, you've got to believe, you've got to have faith."
And at that moment Indiana takes a step out into the abyss,
and this bridge of faith comes and meets his foot
and allows him to cross to the other side.
Some of you in the audience today are going to be the faithwalkers.
And you are going to have to take the step out into the abyss
without ever knowing what is going to meet you.
But the other people in the audience
are going to be the bridge of faith that rises up to meet the others.
So that they can cross into their next iteration
of whatever it is that they're called to be.
It takes two sides to recognise each other and see the spark in the other.
I think we oversimplify it by saying, "Just do it.
You can do it if you believe in it."
Yes, but it takes two different kinds of people
to make the magic happen.
See, being here in Greece for just a few days,
I've already talked to people who have told me
that Greece is going through a very deeply difficult time with the economy.
And people are having to take on second or third careers,
often later in life.
And I can imagine,
this is incredibly scary for some of you.
But what I'm saying is, everybody in this whole room
is going to have to come together and rise up,
because necessity is the mother of invention.
Don't listen to the politicians, don't listen to what the economy says,
you rebuild your nation anew because, guess what,
this is the cradle of civilisation, intellectual civilisation.
Democracy came from this place.
And I can't wait to see what's going to come from all of you.
Just take the step and jump.
And look for the other people who are that spark, and grow them
so that they can do their thing.
Life is a series of what look like ordinary twists and turns
that become extraordinary only in hindsight
when we look at the skins that we have shed
and what has emerged in its place.
Someday, guys, a Shannon is going to show up at your doorstep
and come knocking.
Is your heart and your intuition going to be ready for me?
Thank you.
(Applause)