WEBVTT

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Thanks for sticking around,

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thanks for having a big red X
burned into your eyeballs

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for the next three days.

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(Laughter)

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Today I want to talk
about the meaning of words,

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how we define them

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and how they, almost as revenge,

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define us.

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The English language
is a magnificent sponge.

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I love the English language.
I'm glad that I speak it.

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I think you are all lucky
to speak it, as well.

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But for all that, it has a lot of holes.

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In Greek, there's a word, "lachesism"

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which is the hunger for disaster.

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You know, when you see
a thunderstorm on the horizon

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and you just find yourself
rooting for the storm.

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In Mandarin, they have a word "yù yī" --

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I'm not pronouncing that correctly --

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which means the longing
to feel intensely again

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the way you did when you were a kid.

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In Polish, they have a word "jouska"

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which is the kind of
hypothetical conversation

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that you compulsively
play out in your head.

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And finally, in German,
of course in German,

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they have a word called "Zielschmerz,"

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which is the dread
of getting what you want.

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(Laughter)

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Finally fulfilling a lifelong dream.

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I'm German myself,
so I know exactly what that feels like.

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Now, I'm not sure
if I would use any of these words

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as I go about my day,

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but I'm really glad they exist.

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But the only reason they exist
is because I made them up.

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I am the author of "The Dictionary
of Obscure Sorrows,"

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which I've been writing
for the last seven years.

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And the whole mission of the project

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is to find holes
in the language of emotion

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and try to fill them

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so that we have a way of talking
about all those human peccadilloes

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and quirks of the human condition

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that we all feel
but may not think to talk about

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because we don't have the words to do it.

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It started watching the end credits
of "Saturday Night Live,"

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and I was beset by the most
beautiful and haunting melancholy.

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If you ever get a chance
to stay up that late,

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I would urge you to watch
the end credits of SNL.

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And so, I decided to try
to define that emotion.

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And about halfway through this project,

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I defined "sonder,"

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the idea that we all think of ourselves
as the main character

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and everyone else is just extras.

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But in reality,
we're all the main character,

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and you yourself are an extra
in someone else's story.

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And so as soon as I published that,

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I got a lot of response from people

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saying "thank you for giving voice
to something I had felt all my life

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but there was no word for that."

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So it made them feel less alone.

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That's the power of words,

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to make us feel less alone.

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And it was not long after that

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that I started to notice sonder

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being used earnestly
in conversations online,

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and not long after I actually noticed it,

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I caught it next to me
in an actual conversation in person.

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There is no stranger feeling
than making up a word

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and then seeing it
take on a mind of its own.

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I don't have a word
for that yet, but I will.

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(Laughter)

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I'm working on it.

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I started to think
about what makes words real,

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because a lot of people ask me,

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the most common thing
I got from people is,

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"Well, are these words made up?
I don't really understand."

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And I didn't really know what to tell them

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because once sonder started to take off,

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who am I to say what words
are real and what aren't.

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And so I sort of felt like Steve Jobs,
who described his epiphany

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as when he realized that most of us,
as we go through the day,

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we just try to avoid
bouncing against the walls too much

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and just sort of get on with things.

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But once you realize that people --

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that this world was built
by people no smarter than you,

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then you can reach out
and touch those walls

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and even put your hand through them

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and realize that you have
the power to change it.

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It's phenomenal.

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So I think from there,
that changed how I look at words

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and what makes words real.

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And when people ask me,
"Are these words real?"

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I had a variety of answers
that I tried out.

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Some of them made sense.
Some of them didn't,

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but one of them I tried out was,

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"Well, a word is real
if you want it to be real."

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The way that this path is real
because people wanted it to be there.

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(Laughter)

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It happens on college
campuses all the time.

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It's called a "desire path."

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(Laughter)

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And so, languages
are a reflection of desire

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something that they want to be there.

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And it may be the road less traveled,

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but it will get there eventually.

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But that's not really a satisfying answer,

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so I gave up on that one.

NOTE Paragraph

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But then I decided,
what people are really asking

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when they're asking if a word is real,
they're really asking,

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"Well, how many brains
will this give me access to?"

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Because I think that's
a lot of how we look at language.

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A word is essentially a key

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that gets us into certain people's heads,

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and if it gets us into one brain,

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it's not really worth it,

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not really worth knowing.

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Two brains, eh, it depends on who it is.

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A million brains, OK, now we're talking.

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And so a real word is one that gets you
access to as many brains as you can.

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That's what makes it worth knowing.

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Incidentally, the realest word of all
by this measure is this.

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[O.K.]

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That's it.

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The realest word we have.

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That is the closest thing we have
to a master key.

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That's the most commonly
understood word in the world,

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no matter where you are.

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The problem with that is,

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no one seems to know
what those two letters stand for.

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(Laughter)

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Which is kind of weird, right?

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I mean, it could be a misspelling
of "all correct," I guess,

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or "old kinderhook."

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No one really seems to know,
but the fact that it doesn't matter

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says something about
how we add meaning to words.

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The meaning is not
in the words themselves.

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We're the ones
that pour ourselves into it.

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And I think, when we're all searching
for meaning in our lives,

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and searching for the meaning of life,

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I think words have
something to do with that.

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And I think if you're looking
for the meaning of something,

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the dictionary is a decent place to start.

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I saw an interview with
the religious scholar Reza Aslan.

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He was describing a misunderstanding

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that many people have about religion.

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He said that what a religion is

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is basically a set of
symbols and metaphors

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that people pour themselves into

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to try to express something inexpressible.

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Religion is essentially just a language.

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That's all it is.

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It's a container for whatever
meanings we bring to it.

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And that got me thinking ...

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What if language was a kind of religion.

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That would mean that this
is basically our holy book.

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And if you think of the creation story,

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it's really more of a definition story.

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In the beginning, there was chaos
upon the waters of the Earth

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and then God separated
the land from the sea,

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the fish from the birds, man from woman,

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the eternal from the ephemeral.

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That's all in these pages.

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That's what a definition is.

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And so, if we're looking
for meaning in the world,

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this is our faith, this is our holy book.

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Because the reality is,

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and the point of this holy book,

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and the point of, I think, all holy books,

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is that it brings a sense of order

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to a very chaotic universe.

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Our view of things is so limited

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and the universe is so complicated

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that we have to come up
with patterns and shorthands

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and try to figure out
a way to interpret it

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and be able to get on with our day.

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And that's why we need words to do that,

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to give meaning to our lives.

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But even more than that,

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we need words to contain us,
to define ourselves.

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And that is, I think, a lot
of how we use words right now,

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we're all sort of begging
to be defined, in certain ways.

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And I think especially now,
with technology and globalization,

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it's so easy to get lost in the fog.

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Each of us is undefined, in a way,

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and the world is becoming
ever more undefined.

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And so, I think a lot
of the structures that we look to

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to try to contain ourselves

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look like this.

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Both in the sense
of "pound" and "hashtag."

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(Laughter)

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It's trying to box ourselves in
in certain ways

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and say, to look for certain entries
and certain categories

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and say, "Yes, that's me."

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What we do is look at other people

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and say, "You're like me ...

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And so, we are an 'us'."

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And that gives us meaning.

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That's just a way of borrowing meaning.

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The problem is that a lot of that
depends on institutions

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and there are so many of us now,

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and life is now so complicated and chaotic

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that we have to wall ourselves off.

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We're becoming
fundamentalists in our faith.

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Literalists.

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Because we all feel these categories
start to fall apart.

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Have you noticed how many
of our conversations now

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are about the definitions of words?

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I don't know how many times I've seen
a conversation on the Huffington Post

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that starts "Are you a feminist?"

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"What does 'feminist' mean?"

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"Who on this debate stage
is the real progressive?"

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"What does 'socialist' mean?"

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"Who is a 'fascist'?"

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"Who is a 'woman'?"

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Caitlyn Jenner.

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"Who is 'black'?" Rachel Dolezal.

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These are the kind of conversations
we have all the time,

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but they're not really about meaning.

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They're about how we package the world.

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And so, I think the end result

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is that we end up
looking something like this,

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where we allow words to define us.

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We forget that all words are made up.

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They're just models of how the world
could be or should be,

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and so, we're all withdrawing
in our own communities of concern,

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speaking in our own languages

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when in fact, the world is more than that.

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I think all of us feel

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that the categories that we use
to give our lives meaning

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don't necessarily fit us all that well.

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And so, we have to explain to people that,

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that, "Yes, I subscribe to this,

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but that doesn't define me.

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We have to keep doing this over and over,

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negotiating how we fit
into the categories that we have.

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I think a lot of us feel boxed in

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by how we use these words.

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We forget that words are made up.

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It's not just my words.
All words are made up,

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but not all of them mean something.

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And so I think what I'd like to --

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The image I have of where we are today,

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I think of Anne Frank.

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Because she was in her little
apartment in Amsterdam

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and in a time when everyone around her

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was trying to organize humanity

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in a way that made sense
with clean lines and brutal efficiency,

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she was on the inside,
organizing her own humanity.

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I think there's something
really beautiful about that,

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because a lot of it was
about her own confusion

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and her own vulnerability.

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And I think that's why we need
a new kind of language

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that looks a little more like this.

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Because each of us could be anyone.

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At any given time,
we are not just one person,

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we are many people at once.

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And so, we have to get more in line
with how the world actually is,

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not to get too caught up in the models
that we've imposed on the world.

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GPS devices tend to warn you,

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reminding you that the map you see
is not the real world,

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so don't run into a lake.

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(Laughter)

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And I think we need the same reminder,

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that the map is not the real world

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and so if we run into these problems,

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we have an option
to define things for ourself;

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we don't necessarily
just have to borrow the meanings

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that give meaning to our lives.

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It is possible --

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and I know this because
I've been doing it the last seven years --

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to come up with new metaphors

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that make the invisible visible.

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There's something
really beautiful about that.

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And I think if we got
in a better relationship with chaos,

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if we stopped trying to oversimplify

00:13:58.838 --> 00:14:03.073
the interior storm
that all of us are facing

00:14:03.097 --> 00:14:05.763
and the confusion and the vulnerability,

00:14:05.787 --> 00:14:08.620
and how complicated the world really is,

00:14:08.644 --> 00:14:11.565
then we could feel
a little more comfortable in our skin

00:14:11.589 --> 00:14:14.158
and we wouldn't have to withdraw

00:14:14.182 --> 00:14:16.482
within the categories
that we allow to define us.

00:14:16.506 --> 00:14:19.198
And we could take the power
back from our words

00:14:19.222 --> 00:14:21.003
and define them.

00:14:21.356 --> 00:14:23.904
I think that's a little more
healthy relationship.

00:14:23.928 --> 00:14:27.798
I don't know how many conversations
would be benefited by someone --

00:14:28.169 --> 00:14:29.823
Like the game Catch Phrase,

00:14:30.591 --> 00:14:34.376
where you're given
the actual topic you're talking about,

00:14:34.400 --> 00:14:36.501
so the challenge is,
"Don't say that word."

00:14:36.525 --> 00:14:39.634
I think if we all did that,
we would be a little better off.

00:14:40.922 --> 00:14:44.346
Because it would allow
certain lexical fluidity

00:14:44.370 --> 00:14:46.246
that I think we're losing now.

00:14:46.270 --> 00:14:50.366
We're all just sort of
trapped in our own lexicons

00:14:50.390 --> 00:14:55.126
that don't necessarily correlate
with people who aren't already like us,

00:14:55.150 --> 00:14:59.766
and so I think I feel us drifting apart
a little more every year,

00:14:59.790 --> 00:15:01.870
the more seriously we take words.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:04.270 --> 00:15:07.070
Because remember, words are not real.

00:15:07.990 --> 00:15:09.779
They don't have meaning. We do.

00:15:09.803 --> 00:15:11.754
I think it's important to remember that.

00:15:11.778 --> 00:15:16.393
And if we took some sense
of creativity and authorship

00:15:16.417 --> 00:15:18.541
in inventing who we are,

00:15:18.565 --> 00:15:19.715
that is possible.

00:15:20.364 --> 00:15:25.737
It is possible to try to reach
for richer metaphors.

00:15:25.761 --> 00:15:27.841
This world has never been as complicated,

00:15:27.865 --> 00:15:31.276
and our lives have never been
more complicated than they are right now.

00:15:31.300 --> 00:15:36.585
And so, instead of reaching
for the nearest standardized word,

00:15:36.609 --> 00:15:38.922
or just begging to be
diagnosed with something,

00:15:38.946 --> 00:15:41.767
it is worth actually being present,

00:15:41.791 --> 00:15:43.936
in sadness, for example.

00:15:43.960 --> 00:15:45.803
In the chaos of emotion.

00:15:46.681 --> 00:15:48.395
I think that's worth doing.

00:15:48.419 --> 00:15:50.652
I think we need new lenses

00:15:50.676 --> 00:15:55.278
to help contextualize the chaos
that we face all the time.

00:15:55.302 --> 00:15:56.724
And if we do that,

00:15:56.748 --> 00:16:01.315
if each of us is willing
to actually define who it is we are

00:16:01.339 --> 00:16:03.617
with some sense of creativity,

00:16:03.641 --> 00:16:06.141
I think the world could look
a little more like this.

00:16:07.482 --> 00:16:08.632
Really messy.

00:16:09.202 --> 00:16:10.956
I think we are really messy people

00:16:11.064 --> 00:16:12.995
and the world is a really messy world.

00:16:13.825 --> 00:16:15.723
And I think this would not be so bad,

00:16:15.747 --> 00:16:17.610
us pouring out of these institutions,

00:16:17.634 --> 00:16:20.114
which are weakening all the time,

00:16:20.138 --> 00:16:21.931
and meeting each other as we are,

00:16:21.955 --> 00:16:24.361
in all our vulnerability,

00:16:24.385 --> 00:16:26.625
wearing our emotions on our sleeves.

00:16:27.525 --> 00:16:28.675
And I think,

00:16:29.676 --> 00:16:30.876
as messy as it is,

00:16:32.530 --> 00:16:36.330
it would be a little more
fulfilling to do that.

00:16:37.400 --> 00:16:40.200
And I'd like to leave you with a reading

00:16:40.680 --> 00:16:43.296
from one of my favorite philosophers,

00:16:43.320 --> 00:16:45.856
Bill Watterson, who created
"Calvin and Hobbes."

00:16:45.880 --> 00:16:47.080
He said,

00:16:47.960 --> 00:16:51.776
"Creating a life that reflects
your values and satisfies your soul

00:16:51.800 --> 00:16:53.456
is a rare achievement.

00:16:53.480 --> 00:16:55.936
To invent your own life's meaning

00:16:55.960 --> 00:16:57.496
is not easy,

00:16:57.520 --> 00:16:59.336
but it is still allowed,

00:16:59.360 --> 00:17:01.560
and I think you'll be
happier for the trouble."

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:02.240 --> 00:17:03.456
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:03.480 --> 00:17:08.990
(Applause)