In the Six Drop 4, Minute on Stop

     I spent about two hours only watching and searching the TED videos because I couldn’t choose what I would like to write about. Nothing really triggered me to write an essay about the video: first I saw the video of ‘How games make kids smarter’ by Gabe Zichermann then ‘Experiments that hint of longer lives’, then‘We can avoid aging’ and then ‘A 12-year-old app developer’. Since I really didn’t like the hackneyed stories of young activists who call people to action in order to change the world, I avoided watching Natalie’s ‘Being young and making an impact’. Their stories are all the same, didactic, and they are all so zealous because they are just so idealistic. I thought Natalie's was just the same as I inferred from the title. However, because I had not much choice left, it was inevitable for me to watch Natalie’s which was large on the TED homepage.

     For the first three to four minutes, I was bored out because of her talking about her mom and about the ‘anonymous extraordinaries’ which I quite expected to hear from a girl like her. But from the four minutes and after the whole thirteen minutes I was, vehemently, with her and the ‘invisible children’ she saved. Concise summary of the video is this: Natalie saw the film ‘invisible children’ which is about kids getting abducted by a rebel leader in Africa and forced to shoot people. The conflict, which the kids were fighting in, was happening for twenty-five years. Something fueled her into action, and when she found out that there’s a bill that can solve the whole problem, she fled to San Diego for internship and protested for the pass of the bill. She postponed college, and she was not paid but actually used up quite amount of money, but she was resolute with what she wanted to do. The protests burgeoned, thousands of people and celebrities gathered in the movement. Finally, after getting introduced in Ophra Winfrey Show, the bill passed the Congress unanimously and President Obama signed it at last.

     What grabbed my biased and parochial attention so much was her candidness. She really seemed to work just for what she thought was right without for any recognition. She was not for anything else but solely for what she wanted to do. For the last one minute she says: “Whatever you want, chase after what with everything you have, not because of the fame or fortune but solely because that’s what you believe in. Because that’s what makes your heart sing. That’s what your dance is.” Yes, clichéd stuff, but how could those statements came right into my heart? I could feel how this girl felt after watching the film, and how she really devoted everything into what she believed in. It was different with Steve Jobs, who had a speech at Stanford about doing what you love. He had said something similar with Natalie, but that didn’t really help me feel his words deep through. Anyway, the thing I wanted to tell was, this girl made me to really, deeply think about doing what I want and being the ‘anonymous extraordinary.’

     The ‘anonymous extraordinary’: Natalie says during her speech, that what fuels the movement is not the moments like Ophra Winfrey moments she had but the people-the numerous anonymous extraordinary people, just like Harding who helped Martin Luther King Jr. significantly. Yes, the people who work for conviction but not because of recognitions: they are the ‘anonymous extraordinaries’ who made King’s movement possible, and what ended the twenty-five-year old war in Africa. People who work selflessly and vigorously, not for fame or fortune but just because they think what they are doing are right: they are the real heroes and they are the ones who change the world into a better place.

     As a seventeen year old kid, just the age of when Natalie started her action, I thought: what am I doing here right now? Am I doing something I want, something I desire, and chase my dream with all I have? Not only with the big issues, but even with the small things, am I doing something in the way I think it is right, not caring about other’s attention? Aren’t I just condoning the irrationalities happening in this society? All these questions came up to my mind and it reminded me of living with fervor. I am young but still I can make changes in the world, and it doesn't have to be a big event what I am participating in like Natalie did but can be something small and something that seems to be meaningless. It would be just like, pushing the chairs at the cafeteria back into where they belonged to if someone missed to do it. 

     One last thing to consider, and probably something that I asked to myself for the most: should I do like Natalie if I was just in the same position with her? I will have a huge hindrance on graduating from KMLA in time; will need to spend money on things that I will never get paid back materially; and get innumerable disadvantages compared to others in my age because of the non-studying period. The answer was, after a lot of thought, no. Natalie was for college and she had her independence in the age of seventeen. I, a South Korean disparate from her, am still in high school-one of the most demanding schools in Korea-and still learning about basic stuff. This is not the right time for me to be in action.

     It is a contentious issue: whether to get into action right now or prepare, waiting until one get the influence. The latter seems to be a lame excuse, but that is what I really think right now after a lot of vacillation: I can do my best in what I am doing right now, thus in the future ameliorating the situations much more effectively than a relatively powerless seventeen-year-old girl.

     

     Thanks, Natalie, for reminding me to live passionately, and to live for what I want.