Wisdom from great writers on every year of life
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0:01 - 0:03I'm turning 44 next month,
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0:03 - 0:08and I have the sense that 44
is going to be a very good year, -
0:08 - 0:11a year of fulfillment, realization.
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0:12 - 0:13I have that sense,
-
0:13 - 0:16not because of anything
particular in store for me, -
0:16 - 0:19but because I read it would be a good year
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0:19 - 0:22in a 1968 book by Norman Mailer.
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0:22 - 0:25"He felt his own age, forty-four ..."
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0:25 - 0:28wrote Mailer in "The Armies of the Night,"
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0:28 - 0:31"... felt as if he were a solid embodiment
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0:31 - 0:35of bone, muscle, heart, mind,
and sentiment to be a man, -
0:35 - 0:37as if he had arrived."
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0:37 - 0:40Yes, I know Mailer
wasn't writing about me. -
0:40 - 0:42But I also know that he was;
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0:43 - 0:47for all of us -- you, me,
the subject of his book, -
0:47 - 0:49age more or less in step,
-
0:49 - 0:52proceed from birth
along the same great sequence: -
0:53 - 0:56through the wonders
and confinements of childhood; -
0:56 - 1:00the emancipations
and frustrations of adolescence; -
1:00 - 1:03the empowerments
and millstones of adulthood; -
1:04 - 1:08the recognitions
and resignations of old age. -
1:08 - 1:10There are patterns to life,
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1:10 - 1:12and they are shared.
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1:12 - 1:17As Thomas Mann wrote:
"It will happen to me as to them." -
1:18 - 1:20We don't simply live these patterns.
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1:20 - 1:22We record them, too.
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1:22 - 1:25We write them down in books,
where they become narratives -
1:25 - 1:27that we can then read and recognize.
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1:28 - 1:30Books tell us who we've been,
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1:30 - 1:33who we are, who we will be, too.
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1:33 - 1:35So they have for millennia.
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1:36 - 1:38As James Salter wrote,
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1:38 - 1:42"Life passes into pages
if it passes into anything." -
1:43 - 1:46And so six years ago,
a thought leapt to mind: -
1:46 - 1:50if life passed into pages,
there were, somewhere, -
1:50 - 1:53passages written about every age.
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1:53 - 1:56If I could find them, I could
assemble them into a narrative. -
1:56 - 1:58I could assemble them into a life,
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1:58 - 2:01a long life, a hundred-year life,
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2:01 - 2:03the entirety of that same great sequence
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2:03 - 2:06through which the luckiest among us pass.
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2:07 - 2:10I was then 37 years old,
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2:11 - 2:13"an age of discretion,"
wrote William Trevor. -
2:15 - 2:18I was prone to meditating on time and age.
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2:18 - 2:21An illness in the family
and later an injury to me -
2:21 - 2:24had long made clear that growing old
could not be assumed. -
2:25 - 2:29And besides, growing old
only postponed the inevitable, -
2:29 - 2:31time seeing through
what circumstance did not. -
2:32 - 2:34It was all a bit disheartening.
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2:34 - 2:37A list, though, would last.
-
2:37 - 2:40To chronicle a life
year by vulnerable year -
2:41 - 2:44would be to clasp and to ground
what was fleeting, -
2:44 - 2:47would be to provide myself and others
a glimpse into the future, -
2:47 - 2:49whether we made it there or not.
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2:50 - 2:54And when I then began to compile my list,
I was quickly obsessed, -
2:54 - 2:57searching pages and pages
for ages and ages. -
2:58 - 3:02Here we were at every annual step
through our first hundred years. -
3:03 - 3:06"Twenty-seven ... a time
of sudden revelations," -
3:07 - 3:11"sixty-two, ... of subtle diminishments."
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3:12 - 3:16I was mindful, of course,
that such insights were relative. -
3:16 - 3:20For starters, we now live longer,
and so age more slowly. -
3:21 - 3:24Christopher Isherwood used
the phrase "the yellow leaf" -
3:24 - 3:26to describe a man at 53,
-
3:27 - 3:31only one century after Lord Byron
used it to describe himself at 36. -
3:31 - 3:33(Laughter)
-
3:33 - 3:37I was mindful, too, that life
can swing wildly and unpredictably -
3:37 - 3:39from one year to the next,
-
3:39 - 3:41and that people may experience
the same age differently. -
3:42 - 3:46But even so, as the list coalesced,
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3:46 - 3:49so, too, on the page, clear
as the reflection in the mirror, -
3:49 - 3:51did the life that I had been living:
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3:52 - 3:55finding at 20 that "... one is less
and less sure of who one is;" -
3:56 - 4:01emerging at 30 from the "... wasteland
of preparation into active life;" -
4:01 - 4:05learning at 40 "... to close softly
the doors to rooms -
4:05 - 4:07[I would] not be coming back to."
-
4:09 - 4:10There I was.
-
4:12 - 4:14Of course, there we all are.
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4:15 - 4:17Milton Glaser, the great graphic designer
-
4:17 - 4:20whose beautiful
visualizations you see here, -
4:21 - 4:22and who today is 85 --
-
4:22 - 4:27all those years "... a ripening
and an apotheosis," wrote Nabokov -- -
4:27 - 4:31noted to me that, like art and like color,
-
4:31 - 4:34literature helps us to remember
what we've experienced. -
4:35 - 4:39And indeed, when I shared
the list with my grandfather, -
4:39 - 4:41he nodded in recognition.
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4:41 - 4:45He was then 95 and soon to die,
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4:45 - 4:47which, wrote Roberto Bolaño,
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4:47 - 4:50"... is the same as never dying."
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4:52 - 4:54And looking back, he said to me that, yes,
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4:55 - 5:00Proust was right that at 22,
we are sure we will not die, -
5:02 - 5:05just as a thanatologist
named Edwin Shneidman was right -
5:05 - 5:07that at 90, we are sure we will.
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5:09 - 5:11It had happened to him,
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5:11 - 5:12as to them.
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5:15 - 5:17Now the list is done:
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5:18 - 5:20a hundred years.
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5:21 - 5:23And looking back over it,
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5:24 - 5:26I know that I am not done.
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5:27 - 5:29I still have my life to live,
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5:29 - 5:31still have many more pages to pass into.
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5:33 - 5:34And mindful of Mailer,
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5:34 - 5:36I await 44.
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5:37 - 5:38Thank you.
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5:38 - 5:49(Applause)
- Title:
- Wisdom from great writers on every year of life
- Speaker:
- Joshua Prager
- Description:
-
Joshua Prager speaks at TEDActive 2015
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 06:01
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for Wisdom from great writers on every year of life | ||
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for Wisdom from great writers on every year of life | ||
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for Wisdom from great writers on every year of life | ||
Brian Greene approved English subtitles for Wisdom from great writers on every year of life | ||
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for Wisdom from great writers on every year of life | ||
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for Wisdom from great writers on every year of life | ||
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for Wisdom from great writers on every year of life | ||
Camille Martínez accepted English subtitles for Wisdom from great writers on every year of life |