Transcriber: Marina Aalten Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
Let's start with a story.
So when I went to school,
I remember that all of my colleagues
were so excited every day - yay! - that they were going to learn something.
Well, I hated every single day of it.
(Laughter)
And it's because of something related to my name.
"Glod" in Romanian means "mud" or "dirt".
So every day when I would come to school
there wasn't a break in which I recall these would make the joke:
(Low voice) "Hey there, Mister Dirt,"
"Hey there, Mister Mud."
And I was seven.
Those kind of words really hit hard.
And it went on for many years,
and I always wanted to somehow look as the tough guy,
as if, "Yeah, you can't faze me."
But it was always hard; it was always hard.
In the third grade, we had the religion class.
And the religion teacher does the proper name call,
finds my name ...
(Laughs as teacher)
(Laughter)
(Low voice) "You know, last night there was this heavy rain outside,
and all of your family just went out and protested.
There was mud everywhere!
I think I have a cousin of yours under my foot or something."
(Laughter)
In that moment, all I could think of was the person that gave me this name.
It was my father.
I admired him all of my life
for the effort he put in raising our family.
And I started crying.
And he went on joking until a point where I just got up and said:
(High, sad voice) "You should be ashamed of yourself!
You are a religion teacher?
You should teach us morality, values, good behaviour.
And this is the example you set?
You are a disgrace!"
And then silence.
Like in those Western movies.
(Whistles a Western tune)
He gets up, and he says, like this:
(Low voice) "Sit down.
I said sit down.
You know why you have that name?
Because that's what you are.
You're nothing but a piece of dirt!
You sit down right now,
and don't you ever, ever dare question my authority.
I'm your authority here,
and I'm your authority outside of this classroom."
What would you have me do?
I sat down, and I didn't say a thing.
And after that episode, it was very hard for me
to always find courage and being someone to stand up in front of authority.
In high school, well, things were different.
(Laughter)
In high school, I wanted to be the rebel; I wanted to be the outcast.
And trust me, even then I had lots of more jokes,
especially regarding that thing I had on my head.
(Laughter)
And back then, it was very hard for me to find a girlfriend.
I had to resort to Highfive,
which is the evolutionary ancestor of Facebook.
And I found a girl who had the same interests as me.
She was a rebel;
she was, you know, hip-hop - into that.
We finally set a date on a Thursday evening.
And one hour before we meet, she sends a text in which she says:
"Do you mind if I bring a friend?"
(Laughter)
"Hmm, not at all."
(Laughter)
This is going to be kinky.
(Laughter)
And when we actually meet,
it turns out that the friend of hers was actually a former classmate of mine
named Oana.
And we started talking about the good old days in school
until the point where she asked me:
"Hey, Alex.
Remember that time
when the religion teacher made fun of you?"
And I was like: "Shh!
You're going to make me look bad in front of the girl!"
But it turns out my date stops for a second and says:
"Wait a minute.
He's the guy?
(Laughter)
He's the guy?
I remember the day when Oana came from school and she was all like:
'You will not believe what happened in school!
You know, the religion teacher was making fun of everyone, as usual,
but for the first time, someone stood up!
He wasn't one of the tall guys;
you know, he was a quinky little guy, stiff.
He was crying - things dripping from his nose.
But he was so courageous, and he stood up to him.
And, I don't know,
it felt like so many of us would have said the same thing,
but he was the only one to have the courage to do it.'
And since I've heard that story, you know, that's what I believe as well.
People should stand up to authority,
regardless of age, regardless of who they are.
They should stand up."
And all of a sudden, I wasn't that piece of dirt anymore.
I was something else.
Five years later, I was in Germany,
and at the conference called NaLDS,
we were talking about values, leadership,
what we're going to do with our lives,
and in the closing,
they asked us to speak about something that matters to us.
And with the little courage that I had, I came to the stage, and I told them.
"The truth is, I have an issue that I cannot confront back home.
All of you here have been so supportive, and I appreciate how you have welcomed me.
When I was a kid, I used to be abused -
verbally, physically, sexually - a lot of times.
And sometimes from people from my family.
Now that is one part of the experience.
But you know what hurts me most?
The fact that I cannot talk about it back home.
Because this is considered 'taboo'.
It's something that most people don't talk about.
And I wish that one day, the same environment that I have here,
knowing that I can share this with you all,
I hope I can bring this back home."
After I said that speech, there was a big round of applause,
but I was thinking to myself: "That was stupid.
That was the dumbest thing I could have ever done."
And I went to my chair, and I started crying, thinking:
"Oh, this was so stupid."
And someone comes to me and says:
"Dude, thank you.
There are a lot of people at this conference
that had the same experience as you."
And it turns out
that one out of five people in Europe that are between 20 to 40 years old
have experienced abuse as children.
And all of a sudden, I realized maybe, maybe just maybe,
it's time we talk about this issue.
And so I decided that for the rest of the years,
I would try to be the person
that would help others feel at ease with their story and let it go
and somehow appreciate that, hey, this is our experience.
We can move on.
And when I decided to write a book, I decided to write it exactly about that.
My own struggles of identity of dealing with my past.
Because I knew there were people out there that wanted to listen.
But, of course, you always had one of those friends that said:
"Ooh, we have the big author.
Please, make way. Do you want an autograph?
Yeah, he's the new star."
And that's the thing that most of us face
because we know if we put ourselves out there,
we're going to get criticized.
People are going to make fun of us.
But the thing is whenever we share our stories, it's not about us.
It's the people listening.
And the truth is we need heroes; we need heroes more and more.
But we don't need heroes on TV.
We don't need heroes as in big statues on the street.
We need to find a hero in the person we look at in the mirror every day.
I know that we have lots of ladies here.
I want that when you go back home,
when you put the mirror out
and you're probably thinking: "Ooh, I should do my eyes ... "
Please stop for a moment and ask yourself:
"Hey, aren't I beautiful today?"
Because most of you are.
And the problem is that we make beauty and all of these things way too big,
and we cannot accept it for ourselves.
And that is why I encourage lots of people to share their stories with the world.
And today, most people, when they hear about stories,
they always come with the question:
"But why do we need them?
What's the use of stories?"
And usually when I'm asked this question, there are a lot of exclamation marks.
And especially in companies, they all start saying:
(Low voice) "Yes, but we're not six years old anymore, sir."
And I say: "Yeah, right."
(Laughter)
"We're not.
Definitely, we are all mature. We're very mature."
And so why I always advocate for stories
is because stories speak of human experience.
Stories have characters that make decisions.
How many times are we not in the position
where we have to choose between left and right,
between blue pill, red pill,
between doing what we want to do or doing what our family wants us to do.
Stories speak of bridges that certain people have to pass in life.
And there are moments when the decisions we take are risky.
Very risky.
Stories speak of fears,
speak of those darkest nightmares that we all have
and that somehow haunt us throughout our lives.
Stories have mentors, people that guide the main character along the way
in order to solve their issue and make their dream possible.
Stories are about obstacles and how we manage to overpass them.
And most importantly, stories are about the fact
that most of us hate to be alone in our own journey.
We all want to have someone on our left, someone on our right to support us
and say: "You can do this up until the very end."
And I've made it my mission to make sure that every person
would come front of the stage and tell their story.
My belief is that everyone has a compelling story to tell.
Let's do a test.
If I were to invite you one month from now to speak at a TEDx event,
how many of you would have a story to say up here on stage?
Oh, come on, that few?
I'm sure there are more.
And the problem with this is that stories, they already exist.
The problem is we also need a voice.
We need to practise and become better at it.
Because more often than not, we have people coming here on stage
and they are all like: "Tatatata ... "
"And please look at my beautiful bullet points."
And that doesn't inspire anyone.
We need to make good use of our stories
if we want them to reach a lot more people.
But there's a problem because when you try to do training with people,
you won't make much of a difference in just two days.
You need a lot more time.
And the big problem is that we're almost 200 people.
I'm sure that most of you can have very good stories to say here,
but if we're going to make a TEDx event with all of you,
it's going to take us like 10 days.
At least.
And trust me,
if we're going to have a 10-day TEDx event,
by the end you're not even going to remember what your own name is,
[much less] the person speaking yesterday.
So, what we also need is a platform.
A place where people can tell their stories
and a place for them to be listened to.
This is what we started in Bucharest.
It's a community of storytelling practise
where every week we challenge people to come and share their stories.
And since we've done that,
I was somehow blessed to meet very interesting people
who have something that most of us share:
the willingness to have a better life and the willingness to do good for others.
And every person has had something like that in them.
And at the same time, they were all different.
Everyone could somehow amaze you with the fact
that they have a little dream,
a little something that they care about so, so much.
In the months that we have done this community of practice,
I have seen, first of all, a lot of diversity.
Everyone is a different shade of color -
not a shade of grey.
(Laughter)
Everybody's a very different shade of color,
and we appreciate those different shades.
It doesn't matter if I'm a light shade of pink
and the other is a big shade of red.
We're all beautiful the way we are.
We appreciate the courage that everyone has
to come in front and share things
that probably not even their family or their friends know.
And they tell it to us
because they trust the environment in which they are.
We all see people that face their own fears
and that have constantly put themselves in situations
in which they said:
"Look, I've let fear paralyze myself for years,
and I'm not going to do it once more."
We've learned to appreciate our mentors,
the people that have shaped who we are in life,
and to appreciate those that help us move along the way.
But more importantly, we harvested a sense of community.
We didn't know each other six months ago,
but it feels as if we've been together since we were childhood friends.
And this is something that is missing a lot
in most of the big cities all around the world.
Because we're now in the most overpopulated country,
but the truth is a lot of people feel lonely
because they would want to talk to someone,
they would like to share what they are going through.
But you know what happens?
People always do the wrong thing, and that is give advice.
This is advice for guys:
whenever a girl comes to and says:
"Look, I have some issues. Can I talk to you about it?"
Please, at the end, don't start saying, like,
"Yeah but I have advice for you."
No. Please just sit down and listen.
And listening is the hardest thing that we can teach to people
because everybody thinks we're good at it.
But the truth is, it's a constant practice that we need to do.
And platforms like this can be done in an event like TEDx
but can also be done face-to-face.
And it's not that hard to simply shut up and say:
"Please, share your story with me."
And if I were to make one slide with bullet points on it,
I would make it about this,
what I've learned as the main benefits of telling and listening to stories.
First of all,
we relieve ourselves of stress
because we're all in that constant stress of being perfect,
of proving to everyone that we're better than anyone else.
And think about it.
Whenever there's someone in front sharing their vulnerable side,
we all look in the mirror and think:
"Yeah, I should kind of let go of my own sense of imperfection as well."
We break barriers between people
because, I believe, we choose to judge the people that we do not know.
Usually when we point fingers at someone, three fingers usually point back.
And I think if we want to understand what is going on,
we need to ask more questions
and really try to see what is behind the person in front.
And stories also bridge gaps between people that are shy at first
because they would want to talk to someone
but, you know, social awkwardness - we all want to avoid it.
But stories - if you have someone
that is willing to come in front and share their story,
you know you're closer to them, you know that they're willing to listen
because you know that they're authentic.
We learn, we teach and we develop.
Think of all the things we've learned here at TEDx
from all the stories that we have had here today.
And this is something that you can do on a weekly basis.
And we develop ourselves because the more feedback we get,
the more contact and the more stories we share
we become much better at it.
We practise authenticity because it's not something that just happens.
You're not all of the sudden authentic;
you practise it.
Constantly you expose yourself,
and people can trust
that if you're willing to be authentic on a constant basis,
they know that they can trust you with absolutely everything.
We nurture - like I said - the sense of community,
but most importantly,
and I think this is the benefit that everyone is interested in,
we live longer.
And by living longer,
it's doesn't mean you're going to live five more years
or this is going to help your health -
which might not actually be such a far-fetched idea.
The thing is we're going to live longer in the memory of our friends
and in the memory of the friends of our friends.
Because it is our responsibility to take the stories of the people we know
and pass them on to other generations.
And of course, all the critics will say:
"Yeah, but how is this going to change the world?
It's nothing but a drop in the ocean."
It is one drop in the ocean,
but it's going to start getting a lot more fun
when more drops start hitting at the same time, closer to each other,
and the waves start connecting,
and they start making bigger waves and bigger waves.
Now, we have started only here in Bucharest,
and probably the story will continue here in Piraeus.
But I'm hoping that most of us will wake up to realize
that we need more places like these where we come together,
we share of our knowledge
regardless whether we're big shot CEOs
or are just students in our first year of study.
It doesn't matter where you come from; it doesn't matter what is your position.
I'm sure that each and every one of us can come to this stage
and tell things that are useful not only for us as individuals
but also for the next generations.
And we as young people, the young generation here in the room -
because I know most of us here are students -
we need to really realize that we're at the point
where we're going to take the torch from older generations.
And if we are not going to understand the stories,
everything that happened before us,
history will repeat itself.
And you know why history repeats itself?
Because people repeat the same mistakes.
Because every time we rebel against older generations,
we think we're smarter, we think we're more superiour.
But actually we're going through the exact same thing.
I want to leave you with these last lyrics
from a song that I listen to almost every day
that I think catalyzes the message that I want to leave you with.
(Singing) Maybe we need more shoes on our feet.
Maybe we need more clothes and TVs.
Maybe we need more cash and jewelry.
Or maybe we don't know what we need.
Maybe we need to want to fix it.
Maybe stop talking, maybe start listening.
Maybe we need to look at this world
less like a square and more like a circle.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)