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The Love of My Life (and Why I Need to Share It with You) | Ann Patchett | TED - Video học tiếng Anh
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The Love of My Life (and Why I Need to Share It with You) | Ann Patchett | TED
The Love of My Life (and Why I Need to Share It with You) | Ann Patchett | TED
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0:04
I had just turned 22 when I finished my
0:07
first semester of graduate school at the
0:09
Iowa Writer Workshop. I was also taking
0:13
classes in the printmaking program,
0:16
ambitious young artloving thing that I
0:18
was. I had flown from Iowa City to
0:22
Chicago O'Hare where I'd change planes
0:24
and go home to Nashville for Christmas.
0:27
I had my Hermes 3000 typewriter with me,
0:30
technically portable at 14 pounds,
0:32
because I wrote stories. I also had a
0:36
shoulder bag of zinc plates, which I
0:39
plan to engrave over the break.
0:42
Have you ever traveled with a bag of
0:45
zinc plates?
0:47
They're a lot heavier than a typewriter.
0:50
In O'Hare, I got very, very lost. I put
0:56
my typewriter down, stood there
0:58
lopsided, looking at my ticket when a
1:00
young man walked up and asked me if I
1:03
needed help.
1:06
Time changes memory, but I remember him
1:09
clearly. He had on khaki pants and a
1:13
pink Oxford shirt. He had straight sandy
1:17
blonde hair and wire rim glasses. He
1:20
looked like the young John Denver. I
1:22
gave him my ticket.
1:25
You are really lost, he said. And then
1:30
he took my extraordinarily heavy bag
1:33
from my shoulder and the typewriter from
1:35
my hand and said he would walk me to my
1:38
gate.
1:40
Side note, this was 1986.
1:45
I was shy and I was plain. I was not the
1:49
kind of girl whose typewriter was
1:51
carried by men who look like John
1:54
Denver.
1:56
And my heart expanded with the wonder.
2:01
Together we traversed many concourses
2:04
and I began to worry about the time. I
2:06
said he shouldn't risk missing his
2:09
flight so that I could make mine.
2:12
That's when [snorts] he told me he
2:13
didn't have a flight.
2:15
I asked him if he worked in the airport
2:17
and he said, 'Yeah, sort of. He said he
2:20
was a Hari Krishna.
2:28
What a beautiful world it was when you
2:33
could still get lost in an airport.
2:36
When zinc plates sharp as meat cleavers
2:39
filled your carryons.
2:41
When Hari Krishna's those dancing,
2:44
chanting members of a religious sect
2:48
roamed freely from gate to gate.
2:54
I was
2:57
terrified.
2:59
But of what? That he'd kidnap me and
3:02
make me a vegetarian. I was already a
3:04
vegetarian.
3:07
I had to keep walking with him because
3:09
he had my typewriter and I was in love
3:14
with my typewriter.
3:17
In those days, there were no screens
3:19
updating travelers as to departure
3:22
times. So, I didn't know that my flight
3:25
was 2 hours delayed until I reached the
3:27
gate.
3:28
The Hari Krishna laid my burdens down
3:32
and said he'd wait with me. Would
3:37
I have chosen to spend two hours in
3:40
O'Hare with a Hari Krishna?
3:44
No.
3:46
But I lacked the courage to bolt.
3:51
I decided that given the circumstances,
3:54
the only thing I could do was listen.
3:59
The ability to really listen to another
4:02
person is an essential skill for a
4:05
novelist. It's an essential skill for
4:08
all human beings. And what the Hari
4:11
Krishna told me was one of the most
4:14
remarkable things I had ever heard in my
4:17
life.
4:19
He said,
4:21
"Imagine
4:24
loving God
4:26
so much that you would be willing to
4:29
stand in an airport all day so that you
4:33
could tell people about God's love."
4:37
All day long,
4:40
people rushed past him, even after he
4:42
had forsaken his traditional saffron
4:45
robes to mitigate first impressions.
4:48
They buried their faces in their
4:50
newspapers as soon as he started to
4:53
speak. And still, he kept showing up
4:56
because God's love was the greatest
5:00
thing he had ever known. And he wanted
5:02
to share it.
5:06
When I finally made it home to
5:07
Nashville, I told this story to
5:11
everyone.
5:12
In fact, I told it for years.
5:16
Two hours in an airport with a Hari
5:20
Krishna.
5:23
But as I got older,
5:26
I could see myself becoming
5:29
that Hari Krishna,
5:32
wanting to testify about the greatest
5:35
love in my life, which is reading.
5:41
So great is my need to share this love
5:46
that it outweighs my significant need
5:50
for privacy.
5:52
I gave up printmaking when I left Iowa,
5:55
but books have been my steadfast
5:58
companions, my solace, my teachers,
6:02
my joy. I can't imagine what life would
6:07
be without reading. And so, pretty much
6:10
every day in every situation I find
6:13
myself in, I'm out there sharing the
6:16
good news.
6:19
For a long time, my love for books was
6:21
more cloistered, less zealot. But in
6:24
2011, all of that changed. The two major
6:28
bookstores in Nashville closed. And
6:30
after waiting around for someone else to
6:33
open a bookstore, I decided to do it
6:35
myself.
6:37
This was not the fulfillment of a
6:40
lifelong dream. It was more like
6:44
irritation.
6:47
People
6:49
love to tell me that bookstores are
6:53
dead, that books themselves are hobbling
6:56
towards the dust heap of cultural
6:59
irrelevance.
7:01
Heresy, I say books are the rock on
7:06
which I built my church. [applause]
7:14
Like the Hari Krishna, I didn't do this
7:17
because of what I needed. I had books. I
7:21
would always have books. I fought for
7:24
books because you need them.
7:28
The summer before we opened Parnasses
7:30
Books, I went on tour. I've been going
7:33
on tour regularly since 1992.
7:37
This one for a novel I wrote called
7:41
State of Wonder was going to be my factf
7:44
finding mission. I collected information
7:47
from all the book sellers I knew, but
7:49
the most valuable came from my friend
7:52
Daniel Golden at Boswell Books in
7:55
Milwaukee.
7:57
He told me people were desperate to buy
8:02
anything that was hanging from the
8:04
ceiling, which is true.
8:07
More importantly,
8:09
he told me to put the children's section
8:12
as far away from the front door as
8:14
possible so that when a child makes a
8:16
break for it, you have the maximum
8:18
opportunity to catch her.
8:21
Daniel talked a lot about the children's
8:24
section, which was not a part of
8:25
bookstores I knew much about.
8:29
If you want customers, he said, you have
8:32
to raise them yourself.
8:36
That made sense. Small children coming
8:39
to story time, being read to, learning
8:42
to read themselves will grow up to be
8:45
great customers. 15 years later, I can
8:48
attest that this is true. We have raised
8:51
up a raft of customers.
8:55
But over time, this charming bit of
8:58
wisdom has changed. I don't think of it
9:01
as cultivating shoppers anymore. I think
9:04
of it as cultivating readers. And not
9:06
just for the books I write or the books
9:10
I sell, but for all books. I've come to
9:15
believe that if you're interested in
9:17
living in a society where people read,
9:20
it's also your responsibility to
9:23
cultivate readers.
9:26
What does that even mean?
9:29
Well, reading to children the same way
9:32
people read to us.
9:35
You can buy books for children who are
9:38
in title one schools who might not have
9:42
books of their own. We do a lot of this
9:45
at Parnasses.
9:48
You can speak out against book banning
9:53
[applause]
9:55
because books are not the things
10:00
endangering our children
10:03
[applause]
10:07
and speak up for teachers and librarians
10:11
who are doing the jobs that they've been
10:13
trained for.
10:15
Also,
10:16
you can just read a book.
10:19
Do you wish that people read books
10:22
instead of say constantly scrolling on
10:25
their phones? Then read books. Do you
10:28
want your children to be readers? Then
10:31
model that behavior. Of course, you're
10:33
going to read to them, but they also
10:36
have to see you read.
10:40
Like all the people who told me not to
10:42
open a bookstore, you may be wondering
10:44
if books are even relevant in this
10:47
golden age of technology.
10:50
Think of it this way.
10:53
Every piece of information coming out of
10:56
your computer or phone is a single
10:59
thread. At any given moment, you are
11:02
holding countless threads which range in
11:05
quality from vital to worthless.
11:10
What a novelist does is takes all of
11:13
those threads and weaves them into a
11:17
tapestry.
11:19
Maidens,
11:21
unicorns,
11:24
pear trees.
11:26
This is no small job, but when it's done
11:30
right, the outcome is both beautiful and
11:33
enduring.
11:35
Novels teach us empathy by putting us
11:38
into another person's life. And they
11:40
define our history by showing us how
11:43
we've changed and will continue to
11:46
change. Think of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
11:50
Now think of John Updike. And if this
11:54
wasn't reason enough to love books, they
11:57
also help us develop and preserve what I
11:59
like to call a long format brain. The
12:03
problems of the world cannot be seen one
12:06
thread at a time, nor can they be
12:09
solved. The ability to think with depth
12:12
and complexity is greatly enhanced by
12:15
reading more than 280 characters at a
12:17
time. If you haven't read a novel in a
12:21
while,
12:22
it may feel strange at first, but stick
12:25
with it. What you put in is what you'll
12:28
get back.
12:30
What surprised me most about owning a
12:33
bookstore and practically everything
12:35
about it surprises me is that it's not
12:37
just books people come in for. Reading
12:41
that solitary endeavor has proven to be
12:44
a means of connection. Our monthly book
12:47
club at Parnasses is now so large we've
12:50
broken it into three sections. We also
12:53
have a classics book club and a romance
12:56
book club. And once a year those two
12:58
groups come together to read a classic
13:00
romance, most recently Pride and
13:03
Prejudice.
13:05
Our author events have ranged from Jeff
13:07
Kenny to Percul Everett to Barbara
13:10
Kingolver to RF Kuang to aa Garton to
13:14
Bono.
13:15
And whether it's presidential histories
13:18
or mysteries, what we see is that books
13:21
give people the means by which to
13:23
connect. The conversations may start
13:26
with books, but they go everywhere.
13:29
Reading shines the light that disrupts
13:33
the dark isolation so many people find
13:37
themselves in.
13:39
Go to your local bookstore and see what
13:42
I'm talking about.
13:47
Every time I change planes in O'Hare,
13:51
I think about the Hari Krishna,
13:55
a person I was afraid of, a person I had
14:00
nothing in common with, a person whose
14:03
only intention was to help me, both to
14:07
find my gate and to find a force in the
14:10
world greater than myself.
14:13
Through experience, we had both come to
14:16
see that we were part of the larger
14:19
human fabric. He through his faith and
14:23
me
14:24
through a different kind of faith.
14:27
Maybe this time we would sit at the gate
14:30
a little bit longer and I would ask him
14:33
what he was reading.
14:35
I would tell him how much I admired the
14:39
courage of his convictions.
14:42
I would thank him for helping me find my
14:46
way.
14:48
[applause]
