Kiran Jonnalagadda’s Blog

I’m on a TED Talks marathon tonight:

Now there’s another play history that I think is a work in progress. Those of you who remember Al Gore during the first term and then during his successful but unelected run for the presidency, may remember him as being kind of wooden and not entirely his own person, at least in public. And looking at his history, which is common in the press, it seems to me, at least, looking at it from a shrink’s point of view, that a lot of his life was programmed.

Summers were hard hard work in the sea(?) heat of the Tennessee summers; he had the expectations of his senatorial father and Washington, DC, and although he had certainly, I think, capacity for play because I do know something about that, he wasn’t as empowered, I think, as he now is, by paying attention to what is his own passion and his own inner drive which I think has its basis in all of us in our play history.

So I would encourage you on an individual level to do, is to explore backwards as far as you can go to the most clear, joyful, playful image that you have whether through a toy or on a birthday or on a vacation, and begin to build from the emotion of that into how that connects with your life now, and you’ll find you may change jobs, which has happened to a number of people when I had them do this, in order to be more empowered through their play, or you’ll be able to invent(?) your life by prioritising it and paying attention to it.

— Stuart Brown on the importance of play (at about 17:00 min), describing Al Gore’s personality transformation as he moved on from politics (emphasis mine).

There’s an old African proverb that says, “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. We need to go far, quickly.”

— Al Gore, speaking on climate change at TED (emphasis mine).

Quickly or far, alone or together? That’s a decision conundrum that applies to so much in life.