Small gestures, great revolutions | Alexandre Medeiros | TEDxUniversidadedeBrasília

Alexandre Medeiros believes that intelligence, reasoning, and our capacity to transform are the most interesting things we possess. He reminds us that humility makes us greater and helps us through our life's greatest adversities, showing that our only enemy is our past self.

Alexandre Medeiros is from the Federal District, Brazil, and he graduated in history from Faculdade Projeção in 2006. He retired from service as a military police officer where he worked for BOPE (Special Police Operations Battalion) in the Federal District. Musician, cultural agitator, educator, and athlete in various sports, he recently was recognized as the first amputee bodybuilder in Brazil by the IFBB (International Federation of Body Building and Fitness).

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but inde-pendently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Good evening.

My name is Alexandre Medeiros,

I'm 36 years old,

and one thing I've been
questioning myself about recently

is "What am I doing here?"

It's neither rhetorical nor philosophical,

it's what am I doing
here at TEDx right now?

I've watched every talk,

and I'm honored by the presence
of each of you in my life now.

And I've been thinking.

Human beings have this ability -

when they don't know an answer,
they create or discover it.

And I've created my answer
to this question.

I'm here to meet the quota
of normal people.

Every person I've watched today
is awesome, magnificent.

I'm the normal guy in the story.

There's a bright side to this -

you can identify with me,
at least 99% of you.

I didn't study the data.

(Laughter)

But I believe that 99% of people
think themselves normal,

so I think you guys
will identify with a normal guy.

This ability to create an answer

is exactly what I think
is most interesting in people.

This ability to rationalize,
hierarchize, organize,

create a speech,
create a text, and research

is the most fascinating thing,
the most interesting gift we have.

I believe it to be a divine gift,

and even people who have no religion
can't stop believing it's a gift.

Perhaps, it's not divine, but it's a gift.

I had an interesting experience

when I took care of an aunt of mine
in her last months of life,

during her cancer treatment,

which, unfortunately, took her life.

She was an amazing, magnificent, smart,
brilliant, quick-thinking person -

you know, one of those
interesting types of people.

During a certain stage
of her treatment, she lost all of this.

She no longer had any type of reaction.

She couldn't talk, she couldn't reason.

It was then that I realized
that my aunt was gone.

Her soul had gone away.

Her biological death
was only confirmed days later,

but, the way I see it,
she had passed away at that moment.

So, I prayed to God to never let me
go through something like that

because the most interesting
things that I have

are my intelligence, my reasoning,
and my ability to create and transform.

I suffered an accident when I was 23.

I was a military police officer
with the Special Forces battalion,

and in a street operation,
I was hit by a 12-gauge shotgun shell,

which resulted in my leg amputation.

From that moment on,

I found that I needed to be twice
as clever as I was before.

What I just did,

moving myself from where
I was sitting to the stage,

required me to reason
through each movement.

When you think of getting up
at night to use the bathroom,

you just get up and go.

I have to get up and remember

that when I take the weight
off my right leg,

my prosthesis will bend.

I have to control the movement,

and I can only put my weight on it again
when I put my foot on the floor.

If I don't do it the correct way,
it will bend backward,

and I'll fall, like I did
this week on the motorcycle

when I tried to put my weight
on my leg while it was bent.

So over time,

I had to work on a characteristic
that I didn't have before,

which was to always anticipate everything.

For a long time, I drove a car
with no adaptation whatsoever,

and my way of driving
was to anticipate every move.

I had to watch the traffic much more,

I had to predict when to stop,
and the moment to disengage the clutch

because if I didn't, the car
would stall when I braked

and give that little shudder.

So I'd get back into gear
and drive off normally.

This is a human capacity,
and it doesn't make me more special.

After my accident, I had two options:

one was to lie around,
wait for my retirement,

receive a tiny monthly allowance,
and just live my life,

enjoying depression or whatever.

The other was to continue my life.

I chose to continue
out of sheer stubbornness

and because I look horrible crying.

(Laughter)

Seriously, I look horrible,
with my huge nose.

(Laughter)

So, in that context,
bodybuilding entered my life,

although much later.

I was invited by a coach
to participate in a championship.

We worked on this.

I thought bodybuilding was silly.

I found it strange -

a pumped-up guy in swim trunks
doing poses for a lot of people.

That's why I chose
not to show any slides here

because it'd be weird showing me
in swim trunks to you all.

(Laughter)

This invitation represented
a paradigm shift.

Bodybuilding is an
extremely aesthetic sport.

You have to be good-looking,
your body has to be in good shape.

And to achieve that as an amputee
is a paradigm shift,

internally as well.

I spent a lot of time, as Jessica said,

denying it to myself, hiding,
wearing jeans all the time,

disguising my walk as best I could
so people wouldn't notice.

And I'd feel proud when people said,
"Wow, you can't even tell."

And then, there I was in swim trunks.

They're not even normal swim trunks.

They're ... horrible.

(Laughter)

Exposed to thousands of people,
including videos or whatever.

And I found out that I was
the first amputee bodybuilder in Brazil.

I found that really weird.

But actually, that isn't really
what I want to talk about.

That's all in the past.

Bodybuilding and everything
I've just told you

is just a metaphor for my life story.

I believe we all have this amazing,
transformative, and creative power.

Today, I've seen brilliant examples here.

As I said, I'm amazed and honored
to be with all these interesting people.

And the truth is that everyone here
has this same potential.

I think we sometimes stop using
this potential out of convenience,

or sometimes, our daily routine kills it,

and we let things go by.

I tried to tape and memorize
countless versions of this talk,

thinking this would be the best way.

I even sent some to the production team.

In one of them, I was driving.

Can you believe it?
Driving while recording the talk!

A guy cut me off,
and I felt that terrible fury

that I think everyone here
has experienced in traffic ...

an urge to hit the guy.

He cut me off, and I braked
to avoid a collision.

He swerved in front of me,
then to the left,

went into the deceleration lane,

and drove off.

I realized that the moment I braked,

I had kept his path free, my path free,
and had let the traffic flow,

so everyone could continue their journey.

Then I realized that having
an ignorant attitude

just makes me more ignorant.

Braking, on the other hand,
and waiting for the person to pass

makes you a better person.

Maybe it's a matter of humility,
something we often forget.

Some values have been so forgotten,

having changed so much
from place to place.

Sometimes we see humility as submission.

But the way I see it,
humility is what makes you greater.

I have the habit of thinking
about everything as movement,

and how to optimize
and hierarchize what I'll do.

I usually have breakfast at a bakery.

During its busiest times,
people leave the cups in a terrible mess.

Not content with tidying up
my table to have breakfast,

I decided to tidy up the tables
beside me every day.

People are busy.

There's a Chinese proverb that says
that a man crossing a river

ceases to be the same man,

just as the river
is no longer the same river.

And I believe it.

I believe my life isn't in vain.

I believe I have the power to transform.

And even if I don't open
a big company or an NGO,

even if I don't go out of here and take in
all the abandoned animals on the street,

I can cause great revolutions
with small gestures.

So my perspective of life is very simple:

I believe that when entering a place,

I should leave it in better shape
than when I found it.

It's basic, it's simple,
it's not dropping paper on the street.

It's silly things.
As I said, it's normal stuff.

I'm not asking or proposing
anything extraordinary,

as we saw here of people
using paper and soil in construction,

transforming chemistry and physics.

A teacher who can transform calculus
into something acceptable.

I don't know calculus, I really don't.

(Laughter)

How does he do it?

I'm a humanities teacher;
history is simple to teach.

But to make calculus interesting
is worthy of congratulations.

(Laughter)

To summarize a little of all this.

I was about 12 or 13 years old

when I started to get involved in music,
and I couldn't tune my guitar.

There was an alcoholic who lived near me.

He had a home,

but was basically living on the street

because he'd drink
and lie sprawled on the ground.

He was one of these characters
that everyone has in their childhood.

And I'd ask him to tune my guitar.

We'd play some songs,

and, from this, we formed
a great friendship.

So many times, I'd take João -

unforgettable João,
who's no longer with us -

and escort him safely home
when he was drunk.

When I had my accident,
he couldn't visit me.

He was already quite debilitated,

dirty, stinky.

They didn't let him inside the hospital.

We only saw each other when I got home.

I was still debilitated,
using a wheelchair.

I wasn't using a prosthesis yet.

He came to me in tears

and said something
that I want to leave with you.

He turned to me and said,

"Son, those who can't run learn to fly."

So I believe this is what
I try to make of my life,

every day upon waking up.

My only enemy in this illusory
competitiveness of our daily lives

is myself, past and present.

I want to be better than yesterday,
and tomorrow I'll be better than today.

And I'd like us to try this.

Because the best father,
the best son, the best neighbor

is a multiplying element
of something good,

and society needs this.

This has been an honor.

Thank you very much.

Goodnight.

(Applause)

(Cheers)