| Recorded at | February 29, 2020 |
|---|---|
| Event | TEDxUCincinnati |
| Duration (min:sec) | 14:43 |
| Video Type | TEDx Talk |
| Words per minute | 207.05 very fast |
| Readability (FK) | 69.05 very easy |
| Speaker | Sakinah Hofler |
Official TED page for this talk
Synopsis
Have you ever seen or experienced something and wished you spoke up? Writer Sakinah Hofler makes the case for writing as a tool to help you process difficult memories and reclaim the power they may hold. Pick up a pen or pull up a keyboard and follow along as she walks you through how to unburden your mind and inspire reflection.
| 1 | 00:03 | Have you ever seen something | ||
| 2 | 00:06 | and you wish you could have said something | ||
| 3 | 00:09 | but you didn't? | ||
| 4 | 00:13 | A second question I have is: Has something ever happened to you | ||
| 5 | 00:17 | and you never said anything about it, | ||
| 6 | 00:20 | though you should have? | ||
| 7 | 00:23 | I'm interested in this idea of action, | ||
| 8 | 00:27 | of the difference between seeing something, | ||
| 9 | 00:29 | which is basically passively observing, | ||
| 10 | 00:32 | and the actual act of bearing witness. | ||
| 11 | 00:37 | Bearing witness means writing down something you have seen, | ||
| 12 | 00:40 | something you have heard, | ||
| 13 | 00:41 | something you have experienced. | ||
| 14 | 00:44 | The most important part of bearing witness is writing it down, | ||
| 15 | 00:47 | it's recording. | ||
| 16 | 00:50 | Writing it down captures the memory. | ||
| 17 | 00:54 | Writing it down acknowledges its existence. | ||
| 18 | 00:59 | One of the biggest examples we have in history | ||
| 19 | 01:02 | of someone bearing witness is Anne Frank's diary. | ||
| 20 | 01:06 | She simply wrote down what was happening to her and her family | ||
| 21 | 01:09 | about her confinement, | ||
| 22 | 01:11 | and in doing so, we have a very intimate record of this family | ||
| 23 | 01:16 | during one of the worst periods of our world's history. | ||
| 24 | 01:21 | And I want to talk to you today about how to use creative writing | ||
| 25 | 01:24 | to bear witness. | ||
| 26 | 01:26 | And I'm going to walk you through an exercise, | ||
| 27 | 01:29 | which I'm going to do myself, | ||
| 28 | 01:30 | that I actually do with a lot of my collegiate students. | ||
| 29 | 01:33 | These are you future engineers, technicians, plumbers -- | ||
| 30 | 01:35 | basically, they're not creative writers, | ||
| 31 | 01:37 | they don't plan on becoming creative writers. | ||
| 32 | 01:40 | But we use these exercises to kind of un-silence things | ||
| 33 | 01:42 | we've been keeping silent. | ||
| 34 | 01:45 | It's a way to unburden ourselves. | ||
| 35 | 01:48 | And it's three simple steps. | ||
| 36 | 01:50 | So step one is to brainstorm and write it down. | ||
| 37 | 01:54 | And what I have my students do is I give them a prompt, | ||
| 38 | 01:58 | and the prompt is "the time when." | ||
| 39 | 02:01 | And I want them to fill in that prompt | ||
| 40 | 02:03 | with times they might have experienced something, | ||
| 41 | 02:05 | heard something or seen something, | ||
| 42 | 02:08 | or seen something and they could have intervened, | ||
| 43 | 02:11 | but they didn't. | ||
| 44 | 02:13 | And I have them write it down as quickly as possible. | ||
| 45 | 02:17 | So I'll give you an example of some of the things I would write down. | ||
| 46 | 02:21 | The time when, a few months after 9/11, | ||
| 47 | 02:24 | and two boys dared themselves to touch me, | ||
| 48 | 02:27 | and they did. | ||
| 49 | 02:30 | The time when my sister and I were walking in a city, | ||
| 50 | 02:34 | and a guy spat at us and called us terrorists. | ||
| 51 | 02:39 | The time way back when | ||
| 52 | 02:41 | when I went to a very odd middle school, | ||
| 53 | 02:45 | and girls a couple years older than me were being married off to men | ||
| 54 | 02:48 | nearly double their age. | ||
| 55 | 02:51 | The time when a friend pulled a gun on me. | ||
| 56 | 02:57 | The time when I went to a going-away luncheon | ||
| 57 | 02:59 | for a coworker, | ||
| 58 | 03:01 | and a big boss questioned my lineage for 45 minutes. | ||
| 59 | 03:06 | And there are times when I have seen something | ||
| 60 | 03:09 | and I haven't intervened. | ||
| 61 | 03:10 | For example, the time when I was on a train | ||
| 62 | 03:13 | and I witnessed a father beating his toddler son, | ||
| 63 | 03:16 | and I didn't do anything. | ||
| 64 | 03:19 | Or the many times I've walked by someone who was homeless and in need, | ||
| 65 | 03:23 | they've asked me for money, and I've walked around them, | ||
| 66 | 03:25 | and I did not acknowledge their humanity. | ||
| 67 | 03:29 | And the list could go on and on, | ||
| 68 | 03:31 | but you want to think of times when something might have happened sexually, | ||
| 69 | 03:34 | times when you've been keeping things repressed, | ||
| 70 | 03:37 | and times with our families, | ||
| 71 | 03:39 | because (In a hushed voice) God bless them. | ||
| 72 | 03:41 | (Laughter) | ||
| 73 | 03:42 | Our families, we love them, | ||
| 74 | 03:46 | but at the same time, we don't talk about things. | ||
| 75 | 03:49 | So we may not talk about the family member who has been using drugs | ||
| 76 | 03:54 | or abusing alcohol. | ||
| 77 | 03:57 | We don't talk about the family member who might have severe mental illness. | ||
| 78 | 04:00 | We'll say something like, "Oh, they've always been that way," | ||
| 79 | 04:03 | and we hope that in not talking about it, | ||
| 80 | 04:05 | in not acknowledging it, | ||
| 81 | 04:07 | we can act like it doesn't exist, that it'll somehow fix itself. | ||
| 82 | 04:13 | So the goal is to get at least 10 things, | ||
| 83 | 04:15 | and once you have 10 things, | ||
| 84 | 04:17 | you've actually done part 1, which is bear witness. | ||
| 85 | 04:20 | You have un-silenced something that you have been keeping silent. | ||
| 86 | 04:25 | And so after this, you're ready for step 2, | ||
| 87 | 04:27 | which is to narrow it down and focus. | ||
| 88 | 04:31 | And what I suggest is going back to that list of 10 | ||
| 89 | 04:34 | and picking three things that are really tugging at you, | ||
| 90 | 04:37 | three things you feel strongly. | ||
| 91 | 04:39 | It doesn't have to be the most dramatic things, | ||
| 92 | 04:41 | but it's things that are like, "Ah," like, "I have to write about this." | ||
| 93 | 04:44 | And I suggest you sit down at a table with a pen and paper -- | ||
| 94 | 04:47 | that's my preferred method for recording, but you can also use a tablet, | ||
| 95 | 04:52 | an iPad, a computer, | ||
| 96 | 04:55 | but something that lets you write it down. | ||
| 97 | 04:58 | And I suggest taking 30 minutes of uninterrupted time, | ||
| 98 | 05:02 | meaning that you cut your phone off, | ||
| 99 | 05:04 | put it on airplane mode, | ||
| 100 | 05:06 | no email, | ||
| 101 | 05:08 | and if you have a family, if you have children, | ||
| 102 | 05:10 | give yourself 20 minutes, five minutes. | ||
| 103 | 05:12 | The goal is just to give yourself time to write. | ||
| 104 | 05:15 | What you're going to write | ||
| 105 | 05:16 | is you're going to focus on three things. | ||
| 106 | 05:18 | You're going to focus on the details, | ||
| 107 | 05:21 | you're going to focus on the order of events, | ||
| 108 | 05:24 | and you're going to focus on how it made you feel. | ||
| 109 | 05:26 | That is the most important part. | ||
| 110 | 05:29 | I am the guinea pig today, | ||
| 111 | 05:31 | and so I'm going to walk you through how I do it. | ||
| 112 | 05:35 | I'm going to pick three things. | ||
| 113 | 05:36 | So the first thing I feel very, very strongly about | ||
| 114 | 05:39 | is that time a couple months after 9/11 | ||
| 115 | 05:42 | when those two boys dared themselves to touch me. | ||
| 116 | 05:44 | I remember I was in a rural mall in North Carolina, | ||
| 117 | 05:48 | and I was walking, just walking, minding my business, | ||
| 118 | 05:51 | and I felt people walking behind me, like, very, very close, | ||
| 119 | 05:54 | and I'm like, "OK, that's kind of weird. Let me walk a little bit faster. | ||
| 120 | 05:58 | There's a whole mall around me. What is happening?" | ||
| 121 | 06:00 | They walk a little bit faster, and I hear them going back and forth: | ||
| 122 | 06:03 | "You do it!" "No, you do it!" | ||
| 123 | 06:05 | And then one of them pushes me, and I almost fall to the ground. | ||
| 124 | 06:08 | So I kind of pop back up, expecting some type of apology, | ||
| 125 | 06:11 | and the weirdest thing is that they did not run away. | ||
| 126 | 06:13 | They actually went and just stood right next to me. | ||
| 127 | 06:17 | And I remember there was a guy with blond hair, | ||
| 128 | 06:20 | and he had a bright red polo shirt, | ||
| 129 | 06:21 | and he was telling the other guy, like, "Give me my money. I did it, man." | ||
| 130 | 06:25 | And the guy with the brown hair, I remember he had a choppy haircut, | ||
| 131 | 06:29 | and he gave him a five-dollar bill, | ||
| 132 | 06:31 | and I remember it was crumpled. | ||
| 133 | 06:32 | And so I'm like, am I still standing here? | ||
| 134 | 06:35 | This thing just happened. What just happened? | ||
| 135 | 06:37 | And it was so weird to be the end of someone's dare, | ||
| 136 | 06:41 | and also at the end to not exist to them. | ||
| 137 | 06:44 | I remember it kind of reminded me of the time when I was younger | ||
| 138 | 06:48 | and someone dared me to touch something nasty or disgusting. | ||
| 139 | 06:52 | I felt like that nasty and disgusting thing. | ||
| 140 | 06:56 | A second thing I feel very, very strongly about | ||
| 141 | 06:59 | is the time a friend pulled a gun on me. | ||
| 142 | 07:02 | I should say former friend. | ||
| 143 | 07:04 | (Laughter) | ||
| 144 | 07:05 | I remember it was a group of us outside, | ||
| 145 | 07:08 | and he had ran up | ||
| 146 | 07:09 | and he had the stereotypical brown paper bag in his hand, | ||
| 147 | 07:13 | and I knew what it was, | ||
| 148 | 07:15 | and so I'm a very mouthy person, and I started going off. | ||
| 149 | 07:18 | I was like, "What are you doing with a gun? | ||
| 150 | 07:21 | You're not going to shoot anyone. | ||
| 151 | 07:23 | You're a coward, you don't even know how to use it." | ||
| 152 | 07:25 | And I kept going on | ||
| 153 | 07:27 | and on | ||
| 154 | 07:28 | and on, | ||
| 155 | 07:29 | and he got angrier | ||
| 156 | 07:32 | and angrier | ||
| 157 | 07:33 | and angrier. | ||
| 158 | 07:35 | And he pulled the gun out and put it in my face. | ||
| 159 | 07:40 | I remember every one of us got very, very quiet. | ||
| 160 | 07:44 | I remember the tightness of his face. | ||
| 161 | 07:47 | I remember the barrel of the gun. | ||
| 162 | 07:50 | And I felt like -- | ||
| 163 | 07:52 | and I'm pretty sure everyone around me who got quiet felt like -- | ||
| 164 | 07:55 | "This is the moment I die." | ||
| 165 | 07:59 | And the third thing I feel very, very strongly about | ||
| 166 | 08:03 | is this going-away luncheon and this big boss. | ||
| 167 | 08:06 | I remember I was running late, and I'm always late. | ||
| 168 | 08:09 | It's just a thing that happens with me. I'm just always late. | ||
| 169 | 08:13 | I was running late, | ||
| 170 | 08:16 | and the whole table was filled except for this seat next to him. | ||
| 171 | 08:19 | I didn't know him that well, had seen him around the office. | ||
| 172 | 08:22 | I didn't know why the seat was empty. I found out later on. | ||
| 173 | 08:25 | And so I sat down at the table, | ||
| 174 | 08:27 | and before he even asked me my name, | ||
| 175 | 08:28 | the first thing he said was, | ||
| 176 | 08:30 | "What's going on with all of this?" | ||
| 177 | 08:33 | And I'm like, do I have something on my face? | ||
| 178 | 08:35 | What's happening? I don't know. | ||
| 179 | 08:38 | And he asked me with two hands this time. | ||
| 180 | 08:40 | "What's going on with all of this?" | ||
| 181 | 08:45 | And I realized he's talking about my hijab. | ||
| 182 | 08:48 | And in my head, I said, "Oh, not today." | ||
| 183 | 08:51 | But he's a big boss, he's like my boss's boss's boss, | ||
| 184 | 08:55 | and so I put up for 45 minutes, | ||
| 185 | 08:57 | I put up with him asking me where I was from, | ||
| 186 | 09:01 | where my parents were from, | ||
| 187 | 09:03 | my grandparents. | ||
| 188 | 09:04 | He asked me where I went to school at, where I did my internships at. | ||
| 189 | 09:08 | He asked me who interviewed me for that job. | ||
| 190 | 09:13 | And for 45 minutes, I tried to be very, very, very, very, very polite, | ||
| 191 | 09:18 | tried to answer his questions. | ||
| 192 | 09:20 | But I remember I was kind of making eyeball help signals | ||
| 193 | 09:23 | at the people around the table, like, "Someone say something. Intervene." | ||
| 194 | 09:26 | And it was a rectangular table, so there were people on both sides of us, | ||
| 195 | 09:30 | and no one said anything, | ||
| 196 | 09:31 | even people who might be in a position, bosses, | ||
| 197 | 09:34 | no one said anything. | ||
| 198 | 09:36 | And I remember I felt so alone. | ||
| 199 | 09:40 | I remember I felt like I didn't deserve to be in his space, | ||
| 200 | 09:44 | and I remember I wanted to quit. | ||
| 201 | 09:49 | So these are my three things. | ||
| 202 | 09:51 | And you'll have your list of three things. | ||
| 203 | 09:53 | And once you have these three things and you have the details | ||
| 204 | 09:56 | and you have the order of events and you have how it made you feel, | ||
| 205 | 10:00 | you're ready to actually use creative writing to bear witness. | ||
| 206 | 10:03 | And that takes us to step 3, | ||
| 207 | 10:04 | which is to pick one and to tell your story. | ||
| 208 | 10:06 | You don't have to write a memoir. | ||
| 209 | 10:08 | You don't have to be a creative writer. | ||
| 210 | 10:11 | I know sometimes storytelling can be daunting for some people, | ||
| 211 | 10:14 | but we are human. | ||
| 212 | 10:16 | We are natural storytellers, | ||
| 213 | 10:18 | so if someone asks us how our day is going, | ||
| 214 | 10:20 | we have a beginning, a middle and an end. | ||
| 215 | 10:22 | That is a narrative. | ||
| 216 | 10:24 | Our memory exists and subsists through the act of storytelling, | ||
| 217 | 10:29 | and you just have to find a form that works for you. | ||
| 218 | 10:33 | You can write a letter to your younger self. | ||
| 219 | 10:36 | You can write a story to your younger self. | ||
| 220 | 10:38 | You can write a story to your five-year-old child, | ||
| 221 | 10:40 | depending on the story. | ||
| 222 | 10:41 | You can write a parody, a song, a song that's a parody. | ||
| 223 | 10:44 | You can write a play. You can write a nursery rhyme. | ||
| 224 | 10:47 | I've read -- I mean, these a theories, though -- | ||
| 225 | 10:49 | that "Baa, baa black sheep, Have you any wool," | ||
| 226 | 10:51 | "Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full," | ||
| 227 | 10:53 | is actually about impoverished farmers in England being taxed heavily. | ||
| 228 | 10:58 | You can write it in the form of a Wikipedia article. | ||
| 229 | 11:01 | And if it's one of those situations | ||
| 230 | 11:03 | where you saw something and you didn't intervene, | ||
| 231 | 11:06 | perhaps write it from that person's perspective. | ||
| 232 | 11:09 | You know, so if I go back to that boy on the train | ||
| 233 | 11:11 | who I saw being beaten, what was it like to be in his shoes? | ||
| 234 | 11:14 | What was it like to see all these people who watched it happen and did nothing? | ||
| 235 | 11:19 | What happens if I put myself in a position of someone who was homeless | ||
| 236 | 11:22 | and just try to figure out how they got there in the first place? | ||
| 237 | 11:25 | Perhaps it would help me change some of my actions. | ||
| 238 | 11:28 | Perhaps it would help me be more proactive about certain things. | ||
| 239 | 11:32 | And with telling your story, you're keeping it alive. | ||
| 240 | 11:35 | So you don't have to show anyone any of these steps. | ||
| 241 | 11:40 | But even if you're telling it to yourself, | ||
| 242 | 11:42 | you're saying, "This thing happened. | ||
| 243 | 11:44 | This weird thing did happen. It's not in my head. | ||
| 244 | 11:46 | It actually happened." | ||
| 245 | 11:48 | And by doing that, maybe you'll take a little bit of power back | ||
| 246 | 11:51 | that has been taken away. | ||
| 247 | 11:54 | And so the last thing I want to do today | ||
| 248 | 11:56 | is I'm going to tell you my story. | ||
| 249 | 11:58 | And the one I picked is about this big boss. | ||
| 250 | 12:01 | And I picked that one because I feel like I'm not the only one | ||
| 251 | 12:05 | who has been in the position where someone has been above me | ||
| 252 | 12:08 | and kind of talked down. | ||
| 253 | 12:10 | I feel like all of us might have been in positions | ||
| 254 | 12:13 | where we felt like we could not say anything | ||
| 255 | 12:15 | because this person has our livelihood, our paychecks, | ||
| 256 | 12:17 | in their hands, | ||
| 257 | 12:19 | or times we might have seen someone who has power | ||
| 258 | 12:22 | talking down to someone, | ||
| 259 | 12:24 | and we should have or could have intervened. | ||
| 260 | 12:28 | And so, by telling a story, | ||
| 261 | 12:31 | I'm taking back a little bit of power that was taken away from me. | ||
| 262 | 12:34 | And I have changed the names, | ||
| 263 | 12:35 | and it's been a decade, so it's going to be OK. | ||
| 264 | 12:39 | And it doesn't have a happy ending, | ||
| 265 | 12:40 | because it's just me writing down what happened that day. | ||
| 266 | 12:44 | And so this is how I use creative writing | ||
| 267 | 12:49 | to bear witness. | ||
| 268 | 12:54 | At Lisa's going-away luncheon, | ||
| 269 | 12:58 | I wanted to ask my boss's boss's boss | ||
| 270 | 13:00 | if he's stupid | ||
| 271 | 13:02 | or just plain dumb | ||
| 272 | 13:03 | after he takes one look at my hijab | ||
| 273 | 13:05 | and asks me where I'm from in Southeast Asia. | ||
| 274 | 13:09 | I tell him that it's New Jersey, actually. | ||
| 275 | 13:11 | He asks where my parents are from | ||
| 276 | 13:13 | and my grandparents and my great-grandparents | ||
| 277 | 13:15 | and their parents and their parents' parents, | ||
| 278 | 13:17 | as if searching for some other blood, | ||
| 279 | 13:19 | as if searching for some reason why some Black Muslim girl from Newark | ||
| 280 | 13:24 | wound up seated next to him | ||
| 281 | 13:25 | at this restaurant of tablecloths and laminated menus. | ||
| 282 | 13:30 | I want to say, "Slavery, jerk," | ||
| 283 | 13:32 | but I've got a car note and rent and insurances | ||
| 284 | 13:35 | and insurances and insurances | ||
| 285 | 13:37 | and credit cards and credit debt | ||
| 286 | 13:39 | and a loan and a bad tooth | ||
| 287 | 13:41 | and a penchant for sushi, | ||
| 288 | 13:43 | so I drop the "jerk" but keep the truth. | ||
| 289 | 13:47 | "Tell me," he says, | ||
| 290 | 13:48 | "Why don't Sunnis and Shiites get along?" | ||
| 291 | 13:51 | "Tell me," he says, | ||
| 292 | 13:52 | "What's going on in Iraq?" | ||
| 293 | 13:54 | "Tell me," he says, | ||
| 294 | 13:56 | "What's up with Saudi and Syria and Iran?" | ||
| 295 | 13:59 | "Tell me," he says, | ||
| 296 | 14:01 | "Why do Muslims like bombs?" | ||
| 297 | 14:05 | I want to shove an M1 up his behind | ||
| 298 | 14:08 | and confetti that pasty flesh and that tailored suit. | ||
| 299 | 14:13 | Instead, I'm sipping my sweetened iced tea | ||
| 300 | 14:17 | looking around at the table, at the coworkers around me, | ||
| 301 | 14:20 | none of whom, not one, looks back at me. | ||
| 302 | 14:24 | Rather, | ||
| 303 | 14:27 | they do the most American things they can do. | ||
| 304 | 14:30 | They praise their Lord, | ||
| 305 | 14:33 | they stuff their faces | ||
| 306 | 14:35 | and pretend they don't hear him | ||
| 307 | 14:38 | and pretend they don't see me. | ||
| 308 | 14:42 | Thank you. |