Life without strings | Umaimah Mendhro | TEDxAjman

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

Umaimah did not let visa issue stop her from attending our TEDx event, where she shared three thoughtful messages with us on life.

Umaimah is also the founder and chair of Dreamfly (thedreamfly.org), a global initiative that strives to create human connections across communities in conflict through the power of education, exposure, and empowerment for a better, unified future. Dreamfly has operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and Rwanda – touching over 5,000 lives.

I am sorry that I could not be there
with you today because of visa issues,

but given the theme of this event,

I thought I should not let
any strings hold me back.

So here I am; in spirit.

I was looking
through the lens of my camera:

two big piercing eyes
looking right back at me,

full of wicked smarts and determination.

I asked, "What do you want to be
when you grow up?",

prepared to be pleasantly
surprised yet again.

Kids all over the ends of Pakistan
were dreaming big, audacious dreams

of becoming doctors, lawyers,
the world's fastest pilots...

The kid with the piercing eyes,
with the slight hesitation in his voice,

looked at me, and he said, "A scientist."

"A scientist," I said, "Why a scientist?"
"So I can bomb the enemy."

I am from a tiny village
in Pakistan myself,

a village that does not exist
in the world on any maps;

a village called Akri,

where there's no clean drinking water,
no proper toilets, or proper schools.

My father was one of the only people
from this village who got educated.

He saw glimmers of the world
beyond his village

through his grandfather's eyes,

who had come back with fascinating
wonder stories of the world outside.

My father got consumed by the idea

of simply going to a school
and making something of his life.

When he turned seven,

he walked several miles
to admit himself to a school.

His parents,

realizing that their older son
was about to desert them,

were furious,

the village elders enraged.

How could he abandon
his family, his community?

But all that did was to spark
a burning fire in my father's stomach

to discover, learn, explore,
and do something extraordinary.

He left the village, and he went on
to attend a medical school,

where he met my mum,

the most wonderful person
in the world I know.

Together they built a hospital.

Where?

In a tiny town right
next to my father's village.

They stayed with their family,
their neighbors, their community

through thick and thin,

and made a home on top of that hospital
where we grew up.

To date, my mother must have taken care
of hundreds of thousands of patients,

our entire village, and then, 1,000 more.

When I was two,

my parents, wanting to give
my brother and I a proper education,

decided that they would move
out of the village.

They got us admitted to one
of the best private schools in Pakistan.

They were excited
to start a new life with their new family.

But when their patients got news of this,
they came in masses,

knocking on my mother's door,
pleading her not to leave them.

"We will pray that your children
go to the best schools," they said.

"Not just in Pakistan but in the world.
Don't leave us here."

And my mother is
the strongest believer in education.

She wanted to give us
the best chance at success in life.

But she simply could not put
one foot in front of the other

and leave her patients behind.

So she decided to stay in that village

and put her trust in the fire
we could cultivate in our hearts,

that would overcome all circumstances
that are thrown our way.

With no proper schools around,
we were homeschooled much of our lives.

Education became less bad
going through text books,

and more an adventurous quest
to discover and explore.

I learned literature
from a local fledgeling author;

basic math from a retired
university professor;

and biology, from the village's
resident doctors, my parents.

And the fire burnt hard.

I dreamt of going
to the best institutions in the world

and charted my path to Harvard,
attaining a life-long dream,

and in the process,

becoming the only woman in my family
to ever leave our village.

My brother made his way to Stanford.

Just like my mother's patients
had wished for us.

Not in spite of
but because of her circumstances.

And just like our father,

who got to know the burning desire
to educate himself,

become a doctor and serve his village,
because of his trying past.

The thing is we all come with strings.

Think about it.

We come with a name,
a first and a last name,

we are born male or female,

with a certain color to our skin,
a certain ethnicity.

We are born into traditions,
norms, and expectations.

All those are our strings.

And our strings can hold us back,

and while we may hate our strings,
we cannot avoid them.

And here's the other thing

and what I would like you
to consider today:

while our strings can hold us back,
our strings can also give us direction.

They can give us our passion,
our purpose, our desire, our spark.

Our strings are what can light
the brightest fire within us.

So my first message to you

is, instead of tempting to detach
yourself from your strings,

from the burdens of your past
and that of your identity,

and becoming just like the next person,

what if you embraced your unique strings,
what if you acknowledged them,

let them live, and let them
give you your purpose?

Because true passion,
true desire, true purpose

is never instigated without a true fire.

During my first semester at Harvard,

I got to learn the story
of a classmate from Israel, Avi Kramer.

A rising star, a kind-hearted,
ambitious young man,

ready to conquer the world
with the gentle smile on his face.

As he was starting his life at Harvard,

his entire world changed around him
in a matter of days.

Before he knew it,

he had lost the ability to walk, talk,
move his hands or feed himself.

He was diagnosed with ALS,

a rapidly degenerative fatal illness
with no cure or treatment.

Every inch of Avi's body
was tied to his strings,

his strings tied shut to his wheelchair.

He was given roughly 1,000 days to live.

But instead of preparing for his death
- a computer scientist by training -

Avi set out to investigate,
understand, and decode

what was happening to his body.

He wanted to figure out why it was
that there was no cure for the disease.

He looked at each problem one by one,

from lack of cross-disciplinary research

to limited attention
and incentives in the field.

And devised a plan against them.

He founded Price for Life,

an organization dedicated to novel forms
of research and incentives,

addressing the reasons

why the scientific community
had not yet found a cure for ALS.

It's now been nearly a decade
that Avi was first diagnosed,

and he is still going strong.

He stretched those strings
far and wide, and he challenged them,

just as much as his strings
challenged his survival.

So my second message to you
is that when you look at your strings,

realize that your strings
are not meant to be left unquestioned.

There is no reason why you should
not examine your strings,

decode them, challenge them,
reform, and transform them.

If every generation
left its strings in place,

exactly the way they found them,

society would never move forward.

Instead, if each of us
embraced our strings,

not so that we can be tied down by them

but so we can reshape and reform them,
and chart a future from our past,

we can move the world forward.

It was a long, hard-won path to Harvard,

but once there, I couldn't stay.

Instead of feeling proud,
I felt this deep guilt and embarrassment.

I couldn't brush aside the fact
that while I had come so far,

my family, my village,
stayed where it was decades ago.

I knew the children of Akri
dreamed the same dreams I did,

and we shared the same strings.

Yet their lives and mine
felt millions of miles apart.

So I left.

I left Harvard and went to my village,
and met hundreds of little children there.

I took their pictures
so I would always remember them,

and I asked them what they wanted
to be when they grow up.

They shared their crazy,
unreasonable dreams with me,

and filled my heart with love,
hope, and finally, pride.

It was not until I was faced
with those two beautiful piercing eyes,

right in the middle
of my village, my home,

looking back at me through my camera lens,

not till the hesitant voice
on the tiny frame

told me he wanted to be a scientist
so he could bomb the enemy,

did I make the determination
to build a school in Akri.

In that moment,

I felt I alone bore the responsibility

to touch this one kid's life
and save 1,000 more.

I knew I had to give him

the ability to question
and challenge his strings,

his society's expectations and assumptions

just like Avi questioned
the given assumption of his time.

This was my responsibility,
this was my opportunity.

Did I have the option to simply walk away?

I started on a mission
to raise 100,000 dollars

and build a school
for 100 children in Akri.

A school where I hoped

these children could craft
and realize purposeful dreams

and learn to question, challenge,
and reason for themselves.

A place where I could create
a future for my past.

With the support of an amazing group
of friends, colleagues, and partners,

we formed our organization, the Dreamfly,

and went on to build
institutions and schools

across Afghanistan, India, Rwanda,
and soon, Latin America.

Touching close to 5,000 lives.

A tiny drop in a cosmic ocean, yes,

but sometimes, one drop
is all it takes to start a sea change.

So what we know about strings
is that they hold us back.

Strings live in the past,

and they attach us to our past,
they attach us to our barriers.

But what we don't realize

is that when we pull on those strings,
we pull on our barriers,

just as much as our barriers pull on us.

Our strings are the only thing we have

that can led us move the heavy mountains
of our past into the future with us.

So my third and final message
to you is this:

take a long look at your own strings;

at your roots, your identity,
your barriers,

and ask yourself how will you use
your unique strings,

what will you do with them,
what will you let them do to you?

Without strings, the most you can do
is progress yourself.

You can chase your dreams, yes,
you can create your future;

but in the progress of crafting
a new identity,

a new destination, no strings attached,

you will surely lose who you used to be
and with that, who you are:

your history, your gender,
your ethnicity, your disabilities,

your given assumptions.

Your unique ability to take
everything that you come with

and craft a future
only you can uniquely craft for the world.

Instead of detaching ourselves
from our strings,

what if we could see them
in their piercing eyes,

embrace them,
and let them burn our fires?

What if we could question them,
challenge them, reshape, and reform them?

What if we could use our strings
to pull forward our society, our past,

rather then be tied to it,

and progress not just ourselves

but our generation, our communities,
our worlds with us?

Suddenly, life without strings
feels too small a life to live.