TED 2016 - what I got from lessons they learned

Okay, this is super freaky WONDERFUL - the theme of TED2016 (February - Vancouver BC) was DREAM.  Seriously.  Dream.  As in, "Hey!  What's YOUR dream?"  The Universe is sooooo my ab fab partner!

Okay, I missed it.  Even if I'd been aware it was happening, no way I'd have the $8500 (US currency) to just attend.  But next year...?  

Hey, I can dream, can't I?!

So, what did the attendees come away with from the Vancouver confab?   Out of the moments that mattered to them, I relate most to these:

• They were readied for the moonshot moment. Seems the #1 image at the conference was Neil Armstrong's 1st step on the Moon.  No fewer than FOUR speakers used that moment as a point of reference in their talks.  Most used it to illustrate the ability for disparate people to rally together in search of a great dream.  All gave shout-outs to our ability to accomplish over-sized, outlandish, way-out-there goals.
  

• Triumph can come from small things.  Big realities from little dreams do grow!  Just solving the problem in front of us.  First, SEEING the problem in front of us, which is no small thing.  Am quietly freaking out as I write this, reading Lidia Yuknavitch's praise of the misfit's myth, every bit as epic as a hero's journey - felt I was reading a version of my own life & the lessons she learned were those I have, too.
  

• Delve into the wonder of the past.  While the TEDites learned about geological history & the "improbability of dinosaurs" & cool artifacts of our cultural history, reading those four words - wonder of the past - brings up my constant amazement at all we can learn from taking a step out of our here & now to look backward, to consider how things were in even our recent past, what we can learn from past eras & epochs that elude us if we stay plunked in the present.

• Different perspectives on what it is to be rich.  I'm crazy about Courtney Martin - and I only just discovered she exists!  Love her phrase, "the new better off."  JUST this morning, wrote "A bold new better is possible," describing overhauling our culture's attitudes toward aging!!  Freakin' out here!  She echoes my thoughts on society rethinking fundamental questions, from who we are to what new or refreshed systems need creating.  Some corrective, some inventive.  All essential "betters" for us to remain successful as a nation & feeling rich as a culture - whatever our definitions! 

• Reality is boring;  let's try something else.  This ties in with all of the above.  We have so many awesome possibilities to try something else, something different, new, flagrantly off-the-wall when what currently is experienced as reality falls flat or flat-out fails.

 

 
Those are my take-aways from someone else's TED2016 "lessons learned" moments.  Check out the article - what are yours?