The Power of Love in Times of Change | Elbert Garcia | TEDxECFS Youth
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhtbgFvmlGU Video ID: IhtbgFvmlGU ============================================================ Metamorphosis, transformation, change. This is certainly a daunting subject, even for someone who well enjoyed these extensive devil's advocate conversations that used to always have in Alejandro Levon's ethics class. We live at a time when the very core commitments that we have to each other in school, in government, at work, with our partners, everything seems to be in flux. Everything everything is changing. Now change is often thought of in very very dramatic terms. And you've heard a couple of stories here today about that. And maybe that's only because we only notice it when it is that dramatic. Popular media likes to present it in positive terms or at least with a happy ending, right? We see, you know, as we've heard, the worm or in this case candy um go to a butterfly, right? the ugly duckling um turns into the the great swan. The weakling becomes the hero. But of course, it doesn't always work that way. Of course, it doesn't always work. You have innovative startups becoming massive corporate giants. The plucky rookie turns into the rich and sometimes despised champion. And Anakin Skywalker eventually falls to Darth Vader. Yet change, no matter where it takes place on the number line, is always constant. The emotion it brings forth can also predictively can also predict be at extremes. We know that change can be scary. We've heard it can be lonely and we can leave you with less than what you've had before. But it could also be beautiful, could be uplifting. It could provide you with things that you never never imagined they could happen. The thing is when things are so moving so quickly. How do you tell whether you're looking at the sunset or the sunrise? I've seen change personal and professional been dedicated to it been sometimes in charge of it or at least narrating and communicating or at least narrating. What should be the keys to our change? The keys to our change. For me, I have been blessed and have received and been in the presence of one key ingredient and that's love. It's on the wings of love that I arrived here. I feelings of love the sacrifices of my parents, my brother, my sister, the great staff and teachers and advisers at Prep for Prep. Some of which like Arthur Whitman and Bob Montter found their way here found their way. For the most part, a lot of exploring and learning was the environment that I found here at the environment. And of course, it wasn't just happen stance. I'm sure a lot of work went behind the scenes to trying to achieve this aspiration for as many children as possible. Now, I'm going to be honest. Imperfect in its daily execution. Certainly very results from peer-to-peer definitely. Yet there always seemed to be enough people who care for both me, my classmates, and the institution. And we were expected to do the same. And so I carried those expectations from high school to college into the real world. Always trying to leave it a little bit better than I found. And it's great to see that some of those things are still around today. At Columbia University, Elco Piscayaniano, the Dominican Club that I helped co-ound, is still in existence. Our colleg's Latino studies program, which we work with faculty design, we passed that and the university center for study and race ethnicity, which a hunger strike and various building takeovers in 1996, helped create. It was after that takeover that I came back here at Field and was welcomed with open arms. And years later, I was blessed to find a partner who shared those same values, so much more. So, my marriage to this wonderful Puerto Rican woman from the South Bronx, 22 years plus at this point, definitely transformed me. transformed me to be a better person but also continue to redefine the purpose and the utility of my masculinity and my manhood. Yes, she would say that by far the single most transformational thing to happen to me to date was not just her but being a father and being a father to our daughter. transformational because our Nadia has totally challenged and changed the way I communicate both personally and professionally. It's old saying Spanish proverb that my mother would always say, right? Kind of loosely translated, right? It's through speaking that you can understand each other. Now, as you might can tell, I'm I'm a little bit of a talker. I come from a long line of gabbers and here at Fieldston as in a bunch of places that served me well. And I did a lot of talking and a lot of learning. But one of the things about having a newborn is learning how much you can learn and communicate without words. Picking up on body language. knowing what was a scream of delight versus a scream of despair, a cry of hunger versus a cry of diaper change, a hug of consolation versus what was a hug of joy. But the truth is, as a verbal communicator, I just longed to hear my daughter speak. You know, I would catch myself as I would rock her to bed to sleep wondering just how she would pronounce those little words. How should you string them all together along? What would her voice be like? Now, Nadia, you know, was walking pretty early, 10 months. Um, but it would take a little longer than we initially imagined to actually hear her speak and say her first words. Now, studies show that children who grow up in bilingual or triilingual environments take longer to speak as their brains process two or more languages. We know this. that and some minor health issues. I mean, it took a while for her hearing to actually get on track. But like a lot of kids, when she switched it on, she was on. She was more than a sponge. She was more than a mirror. I I don't think I ever anticipated how much of an engaged participant she would be as to what I had to say. Look, one of the first memories I had of Nadi was walking into our master bedroom while she was jumping up and down. Now, the eye started. Get down. I repeated this two or more times. Each time kind of strategically taking away the joy from my pronunciation. Now, the eye more serious. Get down. All right. You can hurt yourself. Still no hurt. Finally, with a little bit of volume, maybe perhaps with a little bit of annoyance, I said, "Nadia, stop. Nadia, are you hearing me?" With one quick motion, she stopped. She collected herself, wiped away the the hair to make sure it was not in front of her face. And she said, "Poppy, I hear you. I may not be listening to you, but I hear you. And it was it was her first and certainly not only her last display of that kind of like mix of wit that would any parent recognizes that you both laugh at and you groan at at the same time and my Facebook feed. They adored it. They loved it. Especially because for the next four to five years I periodically transcribed this kind of dialogue right that captured life from the perspective of my daughter. So, here's a couple. I actually did these. If you go on my Facebook page, you kind of read through it. Some of these I'll just read now. This is ladies from my time. This is 2012 is about like two and a half, almost two years old. Poy, I need some help with this game. I'm looking for something. He's got glasses. Has hair, long arms, and he's really really tall arms. He's really tall. The next thing which I personally like is Nadia, if you wash your face the first thing in the morning, you won't feel if you let me sleep later, I won't be sleep. [Applause] So while the return of the Jedi Star Wars people um so now she has this like visceral reaction to watching the kiss puppy why is this guy trying to kiss the princess trying to convince but the love trying to right um but he has that green thicky stuff on his lips you're going to find out that in life sometimes people who you think are really nasty are going to try to kiss abuse. Yes. She said, "Well, it's a good thing I don't have to be in that movie if I don't want to." So, I admit I often felt like Laurel to her Hardy, Hobbs to her, Calvin, Pips to Harry Glattis, right? And these are just a mere fraction of all the conversations because she didn't just ask questions, she sought out answers, feelgood ones, authentic ones, the ones that kind of made sense. The question that forced you with all this kind of like language to actually understand communicate. And as she got into elementary school, she inevitably began to ask the larger ones, the ones that had real no answer to Poy, why do good people die? Poppy, what's rape? Poppy, if I'm so resilient, why don't I feel resilient? But see, here's the kicker. Sometimes she didn't need the answer. She just needed someone to listen as she worked out her answers on her own. A space where she could explore her voice and receive feedback. personal judgement where she could be challenged without intimidated. A space where her silence could let her think and not determine or justify her existence. Now, I got to admit to you, certainly I wouldn't be the first man to be accused of trying to solve a problem when listening was all that was required. And that's something I'm still trying to remember. But what I learned was that by being present not just in her convers not just in her life but also in her conversations that deepened the discussion and the actions that we could take in the future together. And soon, without really much thought, it was a habit that I found myself carrying over to other places in organizing my professional communication staff and the work I did in coalitions. And once I began to do that, it became really apparent that the gap that I and quite honestly so many others have to bridge in ensuring that we not only fill our rooms with the sounds of diverse voices, but the responsibility that we have in ensuring that those voices have a legitimate opportunity to be listened to and to be followed. Now, I collected over 50 of these conversations, much to the likes of my family and friends, and they are as much as her legacy as they are mine, which is why as she entered her tween years, for legal reasons, I stopped catal categorizing and writing these things down. Now, the truth is that's because I've learned that no matter how much I loved and learned from these conversations, the power to wield these stories is ultimately hers and not mine. Love and the best of all intentions is not a blank check for justifying actions, especially when it's connected to exercising power. Now drawing to a close and we could be here all day me talking about how women both biological and those who choose to be have impacted my life and I'm not here to fill a bus of the evening and the folks got to get home and got other things to do but I leave you with this one thought for all the joy that I shared on and off my Facebook timeline on raising this joyful spunky witty fiercely loving young person. Nothing ever quite prepared me to see how as she has gotten older, how she has had to engage with a world that is seemingly set up to tear her down. As an empathetic person, as a woman, as a bilingual, bicultural, biracial Latina. Now, as you guys all know, I consider myself to be fairly intelligent. I thought I knew what the world looked like through the eyes of my friends, especially my mother and my sister and my wife. But just to see how early the world forces her so many others to falsely choose between these limiting identities to make to see that it makes her instantly fundamentally question her worth, her intellect, her instincts despite years of evidence to the contrary to see her joy sullied by the tears she sheds publicly by the ones that she hides. And I know that no matter how much time I spent talking here that she so many others have to live with this every single second of their lives. They we benefit from their resiliency and we benefit from the resiliency of so many others and we are all the better for it. So for me the love of my daughter is both my love for have so for so many people for my daughter for so many others is both my north north star and my engine. It keeps me centered. It guides my actions. It gets me back up to work when the world or my own issues try to drive me down. Now loving something doesn't automatically cure your blind spots. doesn't give you a PhD in decision-m where it doesn't even shield you from feeling pain or even enacting harm on others. It is not limitless. It has to be nurtured. It has to be maintained. Has to be replenished. And when it rests in an ideal world, it gets to be recharged by things like hope and faith and joy, but also make space for things like discomfort and anger. Now, I'm not here to tell you that love is all right. is far from everything in this recipe for change. But I challenge anyone in this room or outside to tell me how you can have a deeply impactful change for the better without you. So as we contemplate these changes that were unfolding before us, I urge you, I really really urge you to think about the role that you want or that you need love to play. How will you make your empathy and your care for others real? Because we know that even the tiniest act of love can lead to the most fundamental of all changes. Thank you so much. [Applause]