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,
-
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.
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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,
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3:27 - 3:31only one century after Lord Byron
used it to describe himself at 36. -
3:31 - 3:33(Laughter)
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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."
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4:09 - 4:10There I was.
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4:12 - 4:14Of course, there we all are.
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4:15 - 4:17Milton Glaser, the great graphic designer
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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,
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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:
-
As different as we humans are from one another, we all age along the same great sequence, and the shared patterns of our lives pass into the pages of the books we love. In this moving talk, journalist Joshua Prager explores the stages of life through quotations from Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, William Trevor and other great writers, set to visualizations by graphic designer Milton Glaser. "Books tell us who we've been, who we are, who we will be, too," Prager says.
- 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 |