The TEDxMileHigh community came together again to celebrate Colorado at TEDxMileHighSalon at the RedLine Gallery in Denver. Allen Lim, Libby Birky and Theo Wilson returned to the stage for an update on their lives and movements since the inaugural TEDxMileHigh event in April 2011. They were joined by Shannon Galpin from Mountain2Mountain, Cesar Gonzalez from Uncharted (formerly Unreasonable Institute), Dr. Michael Huemer from CU Boulder, and Todd Siler from the ArtScience Program.
One thing I love about TEDx events is the unbelievable community of people. We are smart, we are interested and we expand ourselves and thoughts by sharing insights and experiences. I leave every event inspired and challenged to look at life differently.
Earlier this year I became curious about what makes a person quotable. How important is the context? The content? Timing and cadence? Or, do good quotes stand on their own? When wondering aloud at a friend’s birthday dinner, I promised to start a daily quote log to capture the clever, insightful or funny things I hear over the year.
This project has fine-tuned my listening to hear the brilliance in what people say. Everyone in my life is smarter and funnier than ever before! Some of my favorite quotes range from the profound, “Food: it’s meant to be eaten,” to sage advice like, “Passionately follow what you are in love with.” And finally, the endless inquiry available in the question, “What if gummy worms could wiggle?”
Not surprisingly, TEDxMileHighSalon provided several days worth of material. When asked about the thinking he uses when faced with a difficult situation, Allen Lim said, “Take out the word ‘should’. Whenever you’re ‘shoulding’ yourself, figure out another way to say the same thing without it.” Theo Wilson, when asked what one thing is we can do to take action after the Salon said, “Maybe it isn’t what you do, but what you stop doing.” And, as professed by Dr. Huemer, “Rationality is expensive. It forces us to believe something we don’t want to believe,” as exemplified by the fact that over 70 times more people died from the ‘war on terror’ than actual terrorism.
From my experience over the last six months and as eloquently suggested by Cesar Gonzalez, maybe by “listening for the messiah in others” everyone can be quotable.
