Translator: Siye Zhu Reviewer: Sue Kronenfeld
(applause)
The majority of us have no concrete idea
of what it truly takes to feel happy.
This happens even after we have completed
the successive steps towards an accomplished adult life.
I often hear people say, "You see, Mathilde, I have everything.
I have a job that allows me to make a good living.
I have a car. I have a house.
I have a cat, a dog. I have a family. I am married."
Or, alternatively,
"We went to Disneyland this summer.
I bought myself the newest Thermomix
that cooks in my place, but it cost me a month of salary.
Still, something is still missing."
So, in this room today, let's be honest with each other.
Please raise your hand if you have the feeling
that you are in search of a kind of greater good.
Let me see.
OK.
So, lots of people. It's not good but it's good.
Because by the end of this talk, you will realize that...
Needless to say, it's useless to contemplate
the larger significance of your life on a sofa eating pretzels.
We have to become actors rather than spectators.
So, I tell myself,
"In my case, I found happiness through travelling."
It dawned on me that we live in a paradoxical world,
where on the one hand, we take everything for granted,
and, on the other, we are always unsatisfied.
My trips allowed me to realize
what is really important to me,
what thrills me, what makes me get up every morning.
My trips allowed me to put things into perspective and to say,
"In fact, I already have happiness."
They allowed me to say, "Yes, I am happy.
Because I'm worth it." (Laughter)
So my trips allowed me to reconnect with certain values
that I think have kind of disappeared in today's society.
I rediscovered what it means to share.
I was traveling in the Phillippines, where I was on a bus, hot and hungry,
and all of a sudden, we stopped at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere.
There were these ladies outside, in baskets.
No, they weren't in baskets.
(laughter) (applause)
Ok, I'm done. I'm leaving.
(laughter)
Well okay, they were selling something wrapped in banana leaves; there we go.
So the lady sitting next to me had bought one
and she was unfolding it very meticulously.
Inside the wrapping were rice balls,
sticky... but appetizing.
She broke them apart and gave them to her four little sons,
who were scattered around us, amid chickens of all colors.
When she saw me looking over her shoulder,
she spontaneously tore away one end of the rice ball and handed it to me.
Her gesture surprised me.
The most surprising part is the fact that her gesture surprised me.
I also rediscovered what safety means.
I lived in Cape Town, South Africa, and one day, I said to myself,
"It's no big deal if I leave work at 18:15 instead of 18:00.
The only difference is that it will be just after dusk."
When I was walking in the street
towards the minibuses that would take me home,
across the street, two men showed up
and gave me a dirty look.
I had butterflies in my stomach.
When passing by me,
one of them tapped me on the shoulder and said these three words,
"You are white."
It was not a threat. It simply meant:
"At this hour, you should be at home."
And I realized what it means to be able to walk outside
without worrying about the time of day,
without worrying about the fact that I'm a young light-skinned woman,
and to be able to naturally answer my cell phone
without feeling scared.
I realized what true generosity means
when earlier this year, I launched a slightly crazy project
with a friend of mine, who is German —maybe that's why.
So we decided to go and volunteer at a small school in West Kenya.
that offers free education to 200 orphans in the village.
We said to ourselves,
"We will launch a program called 'Cheap Impact.'
With the two of us and 3000 euros in South Africa,
what we will do is travel
through South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda,
and eventually go all the way to Kenya, hitchhiking 5200 kilometres."
That took us three months.
And out of exactly 94 days, we paid for four nights' stay,
because we were trying to get ourselves a free bed and a blanket—especially a bed—
and to save all that money.
In fact, we had to pay for those four nights' stay only
because we found ourselves in the deep hinterland of Tanzania
and it became impossible for us to explain the mission of our project,
and after all, they also deserved our contribution.
We got there with our 3000 euros.
Thanks to our friends, our families,
and to those who heard about our project through social networks
and on our website and made donations,
but most importantly, thanks to those who met us on the way
and gave us everything, although they had nothing themselves.
We finally got there, and we thought,
"If we give them these 3000 euros, we will only pay off debts."
We hadn't spent three painful months being at the end of our ropes,
having frayed nerves, eating strange things,
getting sick, getting tired, waiting in the sun and in the dust
only to pay off debts.
We wanted something lasting.
One day, I was in a classroom.
A little girl raised her hand and asked, "Sir, where is Alaska?"
Her question came out of nowhere, like most questions
of all kids that age, anyway.
I saw the teacher look at me with puzzled eyes, as if saying,
"Can you answer that question? I have no idea."
I said okay, and took the tiny piece of chalk.
I drew a map of the world, roughly, on the gray slate
that served as a blackboard.
Before showing them where Alaska was, and showing off my knowledge,
I turned around and I asked them,
"Can one of you show me Africa?"
Their silence left me speechless.
And that's when it clicked.
Since then, "Cheap Impact" became a volunteer program,
where people like you and me can spend a few weeks
responding to the millions of questions asked by these little kids,
because we were lucky enough to have parents who knew the answers,
to have books, TV, Internet, and teachers—real ones,
not the local volunteers who barely knew how to read and write,
and struggled to teach a curriculum they themselves didn't understand.
Because in the end, generosity is also the sharing of knowledge.
I realized how lucky I was to have grown up
in a country where education is mandatory.
How ironic that I should be saying this at a university.
During that adventure in Africa, when I was in Malawi,
we were waiting beside a road, hoping that a car would pass by.
In a nearby field, there was this little boy
who was guarding his cows and looking at us curiously.
As the hours passed —and quite a few passed—
he came closer, slowly becoming bolder,
until he started to talk to us.
During the conversation, I asked him,
"Today's Tuesday, and it's not vacation. You're not in school?"
He looked at me with a resigned smile, shrugged his shoulders and said,
"You know, going to school is my dream. But who would look after my cows?"
At that moment, I could see in the back of my mind all these little children
that we see every day hanging onto the door of their preschool,
begging their mothers, screaming, whining and crying,
not to leave them to their teacher's fangs.
All these children pretending to be ill only to avoid a day of learning,
all these adolescents—I see you here— who love to skip school,
and all these college students who go to class still half intoxicated
from drinking too much the night before.
So I looked at this little boy with a mix of discomfort and sympathy.
I realized how healthy I was
when meeting people who were not:
those children of the Vietnam War
who suffer from all levels of autism,
those 30-year-old widows who lost their husbands to illness,
those orphans and disabled people who don't have the services and infrastructure
that we do to accommodate our various disabilities.
So today, I realize that I am standing in front of all of you,
looking at you, and listening to you.
I can explain to you clearly all my sensible ideas.
And I still have several good years potentially ahead of me.
So yes, all is well.
And by the way, this morning, like all of you, I got up,
and I ate breakfast.
I had the choice between hot and cold food,
coffee, milk, juice, sometimes all three,
fruit, cereal, bread, croissants and chocolate croissants.
And then like all of you, I hope, I went to take a shower.
I didn't have to ask myself whether water would come out of the tap.
And I could even conveniently adjust its temperature.
I had soap:
energizing lemon-mint or summer freshness raspberry-peach.
I put on my clothes with the daily thought,
"I have nothing to wear", while facing an overfilled wardrobe.
Like you, I drove my car to come here.
I posted this event on social media
to get "likes" from my friends,
using the cell phone I bought three months ago although my old one still worked,
but everyone does that.
And also, at noon today, I'll go eat,
even though I won't even have started to feel hungry.
So yeah, all is well.
And I am happy.
Because I do not have any valid reason not to be.
Okay, I am not glorifying poverty here.
I am not hammering you with the old
"Finish your food; people are dying of hunger",
which only leads to the excellent reply,
"Even if we waste less food, they won't have more to eat."
That's true. OK.
Nor do I recommend that we return to the Stone Age.
I'm only saying that from time to time, it's nice to stop for five minutes
to contemplate our lives from an external perspective
and to realize how fortunate we are.
I'm aware that I'm the narrator, but more importantly, the actress of my life.
And even though I cannot master all the elements of the story,
I decide the way in which I tell it.
I deliberately decide to control my reaction to negative emotions.
When something stressful happens,
I force myself to ask myself:
"Mathilde, is this within your sphere of influence?
Can you do something about it?"
If the answer is no, I'll try to make myself impermeable to its impact.
If the answer is yes, I'll force myself to act in order to improve the situation.
Because it's useless to become hysterical when stuck a traffic jam,
even if we're going to the world's most important appointment,
because our degree of anger isn't proportional
to the speed of the cars in front of you.
(laughter) One of you identifies with that.
So what I would like you to remember today
is this little boy in Malawi that we ran into by sheer coincidence.
This little boy, who had a dream, a hope,
that was so easily attainable for us, yet didn't wear him down.
He was aware of the fact that his actions would not make any difference.
So he was focused on what he had, and on his job as a shepherd.
He was neither hateful, nor bitter, nor unhappy, nor envious.
He was simply there, kind and gentle,
enjoying encounters and appreciating the present moment.
So let's be like him now and then.
Let's appreciate the present moment without bitterness,
for we find happiness within ourselves.
Thank you. (applause)