For The Psychological Health of All My Genius Friends

I preached the merit of TED Talks in an earlier blog entry, but perhaps once isn’t enough. Just now I watched a rousing speech given by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love. It can be viewed by clicking here. In this talk, to use the synopsis given on the TED website, Gilbert “muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses -- and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person 'being' a genius, all of us 'have' a genius. It’s a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.” I think the value of what she says is easily applied beyond those who are engaged in the arts, or jobs of creativity. I strongly support and personally maintain her proposal that we all ought to find a “protective psychological construct” that allows us to keep distance between us as individuals and the reaction of others to what we say, do, and produce. I really enjoyed the existential nature of her discussion (something seldom found on TED). It reminded me for some reason of the quote I chose for my high school yearbook photo. It’s a quote by Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher who lived in the first half of the 19th century: “People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”