¡FELIZ AÑO NUEVO! /HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Qué las palabras PAZ,AMOR,FELICIDADES,SALUD,TRABAJO y tantas otras
que describen nuestros deseos más profundos y personales se conviertan en realidad
en nuestra propia vida, en nuestras familias, en nuestro trabajo, en nuestra sociedad,
en nuestro querido país y en todo el mundo. Intentémoslo y juntos, con nuestro pequeño
granito de arena y esfuerzo, seguramente lo iremos logrando y consolidando como TODOS lo
merecemos. CM
Fuente/Source: Google Images/www.youtube.com
¿Cuáles son los cinco temas de los Beatles más escuchados?
El debut de los de Liverpool on line.
A 48 horas de que los discos de John, Paul, George y Ringo están disponibles en Spotify y Apple Music, entre otras, ya hay cinco canciones que se recortan como las preferidas.
Los Beatles en streaming. (thebeatles.com)
La aparición del catálogo completo de Los Beatles en los sitios de música on line fue, para muchos fanáticos, uno de los mejores regalos de Navidad. Y con el correr de las horas es la propia gente la que empieza a dar cuenta de sus preferencias sobre la música de los de Liverpool.
A casi 48 horas de que los discos de John, Paul, George y Ringo están disponibles en las diferentes plataformas como Spotify y Apple Music, entre otras, el ránking va variando minuto a minuto pero hay cinco canciones que ya se recortan como las preferidas.
En Spotify, una de las plataformas más populares, el tema más reproducido es Come together, del disco Abbey Road, con más de 1.200.000 escuchas. Le sigue Let it be, de la placa homónima, que cuenta con más de 1.019.000. A continuación aparece Hey Jude, con casi 900 mil reproducciones.
Fuente/Source: www.clarin.com/www.youtube.com
La tediosa obligación de ser feliz en Año Nuevo
Marcelo A. Moreno
Sucede como cada cumpleaños: el Año Nuevo te puede pegar bien, allí en lo alto del cielo, como la bandera, o te puede tirar al sótano de la depre. Más raro, aunque sucede, es
pasarla como si no pasara nada, como si fuera lo que efectivamente es: una convención calendaria, social, familiar.
El tema es que hay cierta presión, una paciente pero inequívoca incitación generalizada a que uno asuma el perfil de una burbuja de champagne y lo sobrecargue el ansia por
celebrar, tanto el año que pasó como el que viene.
La obligación de la euforia es una bajada de línea que nos bombardea desde la televisión a la tía, los primos y hasta los amigos.
Y la cuestión es que no a todos nos refresca mejor la misma gaseosa, como nos quiere imponer la machacona propaganda desde hace añares, ni todos somos los mismos, ni estamos
todos en la misma frecuencia de onda.
¿Qué carancho va a festejar el tipo de que hoy está con el agua hasta los ojos en Entre Ríos, Corrientes, Chaco? ¿Por qué miércoles de feliz Año Nuevo puede brindar el habitante
promedio de Concordia?
Por otro lado, en el célebre, convencional y bastante salame balance del año a muchos les va como mona, o peor si es posible. O te va bien en uno, dos, tres rubros y peor que la
mona, en alguno muy lacerante. Siempre es más que improbable sacarse muy bien felicitado en todas las materias.
Es muy difícil que en una mesa familiar más bien grandota falte alguien que no haya experimentado en el año una pérdida sensibilísima. Las tragedias nos llegan a todos como esas
tormentas de verano que se anuncian y se anuncian hasta que uno se olvida de ellas y entonces, justo entonces, se desencadenan.
Hablo con Mariana Písula, consultora psicológica, experta en una especialidad infrecuente: duelos. Me cuenta que justamente lo que ella recomienda es no presionar a quien pasa
por tiempos sombríos, no exhortar a la celebración a quien no tiene nada que festejar, en fin, no jorobar al que está dolido. Dejarlo que, en paz, decida cómo quiere integrarse
al rito grupal. Quizá desea pasar el momento cúlmine a solas, en su casa (pasa a saludar a los suyos a la tarde, por ejemplo) o en otra habitación.
“El duelo es el proceso natural que sucede a la pérdida de un ser querido. Es un proceso no lineal, es personal, único y singular”, sostiene Písula. Entonces se trata de no
escorchar, de dejarle oxígeno y tiempo al doliente para que pueda hacer una pausa y logre elegir la que le parezca la mejor manera de pasar un acontecimiento ceremonial del cual
quizá ni siquiera se siente ya parte.
Gregarios por mandato biológico, los humanos tendemos a acomodarnos en la uniformidad, en imitar, como los monos que fuimos, mal que bien, lo que hacen los otros. Ese esfuerzo
nos puede llevar a omitir o disimular la pena cuando esa tristeza es necesaria. Dejarle un espacio abierto a quien está en otra y la pasa feo, acaso sea el más sencillo y
espléndido regalo que podemos obsequiarle.
Fuente: www.clarin.com
Filmed February 2008 at TED2008
Benjamin Zander: The transformative power of classical music
Benjamin Zander has two infectious passions: classical music, and helping us all realize our untapped love for it — and by extension, our untapped love for all new possibilities, new experiences, new connections.
A leading interpreter of Mahler and Beethoven, Benjamin Zander is known for his charisma and unyielding energy — and for his brilliant pre-concert talks.
Since 1979, Benjamin Zander has been the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic. He is known around the world as both a guest conductor and a speaker on leadership -- and he's been known to do both in a single performance. He uses music to help people open their minds and create joyful harmonies that bring out the best in themselves and their colleagues.
His provocative ideas about leadership are rooted in a partnership with Rosamund Stone Zander, with whom he co-wrote The Art of Possibility.
Transcript:
Probably a lot of you know the story of the two salesmen who went down to Africa in the 1900s. They were sent down to find if there was any opportunity for selling shoes, and they wrote telegrams back to Manchester. And one of them wrote, "Situation hopeless. Stop. They don't wear shoes." And the other one wrote, "Glorious opportunity. They don't have any shoes yet."
(Laughter)
Now, there's a similar situation in the classical music world, because there are some people who think that classical music is dying. And there are some of us who think you ain't seen nothing yet. And rather than go into statistics and trends, and tell you about all the orchestras that are closing, and the record companies that are folding, I thought we should do an experiment tonight. Actually, it's not really an experiment, because I know the outcome.
(Laughter)
But it's like an experiment. Now, before we start
(Laughter)
Before we start, I need to do two things. One is I want to remind you of what a seven-year-old child sounds like when he plays the piano. Maybe you have this child at home. He sounds something like this.
(Music)
(Music ends)
I see some of you recognize this child. Now, if he practices for a year and takes lessons, he's now eight and he sounds like this.
(Music)
(Music ends)
He practices for another year and takes lessons -- he's nine.
(Music)
(Music ends)
Then he practices for another year and takes lessons -- now he's 10.
(Music)
(Music ends)
At that point, they usually give up.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, if you'd waited for one more year, you would have heard this.
(Music)
(Music ends)
Now, what happened was not maybe what you thought, which is, he suddenly became passionate, engaged, involved, got a new teacher, he hit puberty, or whatever it is. What actually happened was the impulses were reduced. You see, the first time, he was playing with an impulse on every note.
(Music)
And the second, with an impulse every other note.
(Music)
You can see it by looking at my head.
(Laughter)
The nine-year-old put an impulse on every four notes.
(Music)
The 10-year-old, on every eight notes.
(Music)
And the 11-year-old, one impulse on the whole phrase.
(Music)
I don't know how we got into this position.
(Laughter)
I didn't say, "I'm going to move my shoulder over, move my body." No, the music pushed me over, which is why I call it one-buttock playing.
(Music)
It can be the other buttock.
(Music)
You know, a gentleman was once watching a presentation I was doing, when I was working with a young pianist. He was the president of a corporation in Ohio. I was working with this young pianist, and said, "The trouble with you is you're a two-buttock player. You should be a one-buttock player." I moved his body while he was playing. And suddenly, the music took off. It took flight. The audience gasped when they heard the difference. Then I got a letter from this gentleman. He said, "I was so moved. I went back and I transformed my entire company into a one-buttock company."
(Laughter)
Now, the other thing I wanted to do is to tell you about you. There are 1,600 people, I believe. My estimation is that probably 45 of you are absolutely passionate about classical music. You adore classical music. Your FM is always on that classical dial. You have CDs in your car, and you go to the symphony, your children are playing instruments. You can't imagine your life without classical music. That's the first group, quite small. Then there's another bigger group. The people who don't mind classical music.
(Laughter)
You know, you've come home from a long day, and you take a glass of wine, and you put your feet up. A little Vivaldi in the background doesn't do any harm. That's the second group. Now comes the third group: people who never listen to classical music. It's just simply not part of your life. You might hear it like second-hand smoke at the airport ...
(Laughter)
-- and maybe a little bit of a march from "Aida" when you come into the hall. But otherwise, you never hear it. That's probably the largest group.
And then there's a very small group. These are the people who think they're tone-deaf. Amazing number of people think they're tone-deaf. Actually, I hear a lot, "My husband is tone-deaf."
(Laughter)
Actually, you cannot be tone-deaf. Nobody is tone-deaf. If you were tone-deaf, you couldn't change the gears on your car, in a stick shift car. You couldn't tell the difference between somebody from Texas and somebody from Rome. And the telephone. The telephone. If your mother calls on the miserable telephone, she calls and says, "Hello," you not only know who it is, you know what mood she's in. You have a fantastic ear. Everybody has a fantastic ear. So nobody is tone-deaf.
But I tell you what. It doesn't work for me to go on with this thing, with such a wide gulf between those who understand, love and are passionate about classical music, and those who have no relationship to it at all. The tone-deaf people, they're no longer here. But even between those three categories, it's too wide a gulf. So I'm not going to go on until every single person in this room, downstairs and in Aspen, and everybody else looking, will come to love and understand classical music. So that's what we're going to do.
Now, you notice that there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that this is going to work, if you look at my face, right? It's one of the characteristics of a leader that he not doubt for one moment the capacity of the people he's leading to realize whatever he's dreaming. Imagine if Martin Luther King had said, "I have a dream. Of course, I'm not sure they'll be up to it."
(Laughter)
All right. So I'm going to take a piece of Chopin. This is a beautiful prelude by Chopin. Some of you will know it.
(Music)
Do you know what I think probably happened here? When I started, you thought, "How beautiful that sounds."
(Music)
"I don't think we should go to the same place for our summer holidays next year."
(Laughter)
It's funny, isn't it? It's funny how those thoughts kind of waft into your head. And of course --
(Applause)
Of course, if the piece is long and you've had a long day, you might actually drift off. Then your companion will dig you in the ribs and say, "Wake up! It's culture!" And then you feel even worse.
(Laughter)
But has it ever occurred to you that the reason you feel sleepy in classical music is not because of you, but because of us? Did anybody think while I was playing, "Why is he using so many impulses?" If I'd done this with my head you certainly would have thought it.
(Music)
(Music ends)
And for the rest of your life, every time you hear classical music, you'll always be able to know if you hear those impulses.
So let's see what's really going on here. We have a B. This is a B. The next note is a C. And the job of the C is to make the B sad. And it does, doesn't it?
(Laughter)
Composers know that. If they want sad music, they just play those two notes.
(Music)
But basically, it's just a B, with four sads.
(Laughter)
Now, it goes down to A. Now to G. And then to F. So we have B, A, G, F. And if we have B, A, G, F, what do we expect next?
(Music)
That might have been a fluke. Let's try it again.
(Music)
Oh, the TED choir.
(Laughter)
And you notice nobody is tone-deaf, right? Nobody is. You know, every village in Bangladesh and every hamlet in China -- everybody knows: da, da, da, da -- da. Everybody knows, who's expecting that E.
Chopin didn't want to reach the E there, because what will have happened? It will be over, like Hamlet. Do you remember? Act One, scene three, he finds out his uncle killed his father. He keeps on going up to his uncle and almost killing him. And then he backs away, he goes up to him again, almost kills him. The critics sitting in the back row there, they have to have an opinion, so they say, "Hamlet is a procrastinator." Or they say, "Hamlet has an Oedipus complex." No, otherwise the play would be over, stupid.
(Laughter)
That's why Shakespeare puts all that stuff in Hamlet -- Ophelia going mad, the play within the play, and Yorick's skull, and the gravediggers. That's in order to delay -- until Act Five, he can kill him.
It's the same with the Chopin. He's just about to reach the E, and he says, "Oops, better go back up and do it again." So he does it again. Now, he gets excited.
(Music)
That's excitement, don't worry about it. Now, he gets to F-sharp, and finally he goes down to E, but it's the wrong chord -- because the chord he's looking for is this one, and instead he does ... Now, we call that a deceptive cadence, because it deceives us. I tell my students, "If you have a deceptive cadence, raise your eyebrows, and everybody will know."
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Right. He gets to E, but it's the wrong chord. Now, he tries E again. That chord doesn't work. Now, he tries the E again. That chord doesn't work. Now, he tries E again, and that doesn't work. And then finally ... There was a gentleman in the front row who went, "Mmm."
(Laughter)
It's the same gesture he makes when he comes home after a long day, turns off the key in his car and says, "Aah, I'm home." Because we all know where home is.
So this is a piece which goes from away to home. I'm going to play it all the way through and you're going to follow. B, C, B, C, B, C, B -- down to A, down to G, down to F. Almost goes to E, but otherwise the play would be over. He goes back up to B, he gets very excited. Goes to F-sharp. Goes to E. It's the wrong chord. It's the wrong chord. And finally goes to E, and it's home. And what you're going to see is one-buttock playing.
(Laughter)
Because for me, to join the B to the E, I have to stop thinking about every single note along the way, and start thinking about the long, long line from B to E.
You know, we were just in South Africa, and you can't go to South Africa without thinking of Mandela in jail for 27 years. What was he thinking about? Lunch? No, he was thinking about the vision for South Africa and for human beings. This is about vision. This is about the long line. Like the bird who flies over the field and doesn't care about the fences underneath, all right? So now, you're going to follow the line all the way from B to E. And I've one last request before I play this piece all the way through. Would you think of somebody who you adore, who's no longer there? A beloved grandmother, a lover -- somebody in your life who you love with all your heart, but that person is no longer with you. Bring that person into your mind, and at the same time, follow the line all the way from B to E, and you'll hear everything that Chopin had to say.
(Music)
(Music ends)
(Applause)
Now, you may be wondering
(Applause)
(Applause ends)
You may be wondering why I'm clapping. Well, I did this at a school in Boston with about 70 seventh graders, 12-year-olds. I did exactly what I did with you, and I explained the whole thing. At the end, they went crazy, clapping. I was clapping. They were clapping. Finally, I said, "Why am I clapping?" And one of them said, "Because we were listening."
(Laughter)
Think of it. 1,600 people, busy people, involved in all sorts of different things, listening, understanding and being moved by a piece by Chopin. Now, that is something. Am I sure that every single person followed that, understood it, was moved by it? Of course, I can't be sure.
But I'll tell you what happened to me in Ireland during the Troubles, 10 years ago, and I was working with some Catholic and Protestant kids on conflict resolution. And I did this with them -- a risky thing to do, because they were street kids. And one of them came to me the next morning and he said, "You know, I've never listened to classical music in my life, but when you played that shopping piece ..."
(Laughter)
He said, "My brother was shot last year and I didn't cry for him. But last night, when you played that piece, he was the one I was thinking about. And I felt the tears streaming down my face. And it felt really good to cry for my brother." So I made up my mind at that moment that classical music is for everybody. Everybody.
Now, how would you walk -- my profession, the music profession doesn't see it that way. They say three percent of the population likes classical music. If only we could move it to four percent, our problems would be over.
(Laughter)
How would you walk? How would you talk? How would you be? If you thought, "Three percent of the population likes classical music, if only we could move it to four percent." How would you walk or talk? How would you be? If you thought, "Everybody loves classical music -- they just haven't found out about it yet." See, these are totally different worlds.
Now, I had an amazing experience. I was 45 years old, I'd been conducting for 20 years, and I suddenly had a realization. The conductor of an orchestra doesn't make a sound. My picture appears on the front of the CD
(Laughter)
But the conductor doesn't make a sound. He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful. And that changed everything for me. It was totally life-changing. People in my orchestra said, "Ben, what happened?" That's what happened. I realized my job was to awaken possibility in other people. And of course, I wanted to know whether I was doing that. How do you find out? You look at their eyes. If their eyes are shining, you know you're doing it. You could light up a village with this guy's eyes.
(Laughter)
Right. So if the eyes are shining, you know you're doing it. If the eyes are not shining, you get to ask a question. And this is the question: who am I being that my players' eyes are not shining? We can do that with our children, too. Who am I being, that my children's eyes are not shining? That's a totally different world.
Now, we're all about to end this magical, on-the-mountain week, we're going back into the world. And I say, it's appropriate for us to ask the question, who are we being as we go back out into the world? And you know, I have a definition of success. For me, it's very simple. It's not about wealth and fame and power. It's about how many shining eyes I have around me.
So now, I have one last thought, which is that it really makes a difference what we say -- the words that come out of our mouth. I learned this from a woman who survived Auschwitz, one of the rare survivors. She went to Auschwitz when she was 15 years old. And ... And her brother was eight, and the parents were lost. And she told me this, she said, "We were in the train going to Auschwitz, and I looked down and saw my brother's shoes were missing. I said, 'Why are you so stupid, can't you keep your things together for goodness' sake?'" The way an elder sister might speak to a younger brother. Unfortunately, it was the last thing she ever said to him, because she never saw him again. He did not survive. And so when she came out of Auschwitz, she made a vow. She told me this. She said, "I walked out of Auschwitz into life and I made a vow. And the vow was, "I will never say anything that couldn't stand as the last thing I ever say." Now, can we do that? No. And we'll make ourselves wrong and others wrong. But it is a possibility to live into.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Shining eyes.
(Applause)
Shining eyes.
(Applause)
Thank you, thank you.
Filmed November 2015 at TEDxBeaconStreet
Robert Waldinger: What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness
What keeps us happy and healthy as we go through life? If you think it's fame and money, you're not alone – but, according to psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, you're mistaken. As the director of a 75-year-old study on adult development, Waldinger has unprecedented access to data on true happiness and satisfaction. In this talk, he shares three important lessons learned from the study as well as some practical, old-as-the-hills wisdom on how to build a fulfilling, long life.
Transcript:
What keeps us healthy and happy as we go through life? If you were going to invest now in your future best self, where would you put your time and your energy? There was a recent survey of millennials asking them what their most important life goals were, and over 80 percent said that a major life goal for them was to get rich. And another 50 percent of those same young adults said that another major life goal was to become famous.
(Laughter)
And we're constantly told to lean in to work, to push harder and achieve more. We're given the impression that these are the things that we need to go after in order to have a good life. Pictures of entire lives, of the choices that people make and how those choices work out for them, those pictures are almost impossible to get. Most of what we know about human life we know from asking people to remember the past, and as we know, hindsight is anything but 20/20. We forget vast amounts of what happens to us in life, and sometimes memory is downright creative.
But what if we could watch entire lives as they unfold through time? What if we could study people from the time that they were teenagers all the way into old age to see what really keeps people happy and healthy?
We did that. The Harvard Study of Adult Development may be the longest study of adult life that's ever been done. For 75 years, we've tracked the lives of 724 men, year after year, asking about their work, their home lives, their health, and of course asking all along the way without knowing how their life stories were going to turn out.
Studies like this are exceedingly rare. Almost all projects of this kind fall apart within a decade because too many people drop out of the study, or funding for the research dries up, or the researchers get distracted, or they die, and nobody moves the ball further down the field. But through a combination of luck and the persistence of several generations of researchers, this study has survived. About 60 of our original 724 men are still alive, still participating in the study, most of them in their 90s. And we are now beginning to study the more than 2,000 children of these men. And I'm the fourth director of the study.
Since 1938, we've tracked the lives of two groups of men. The first group started in the study when they were sophomores at Harvard College. They all finished college during World War II, and then most went off to serve in the war. And the second group that we've followed was a group of boys from Boston's poorest neighborhoods, boys who were chosen for the study specifically because they were from some of the most troubled and disadvantaged families in the Boston of the 1930s. Most lived in tenements, many without hot and cold running water.
When they entered the study, all of these teenagers were interviewed. They were given medical exams. We went to their homes and we interviewed their parents. And then these teenagers grew up into adults who entered all walks of life. They became factory workers and lawyers and bricklayers and doctors, one President of the United States. Some developed alcoholism. A few developed schizophrenia. Some climbed the social ladder from the bottom all the way to the very top, and some made that journey in the opposite direction.
The founders of this study would never in their wildest dreams have imagined that I would be standing here today, 75 years later, telling you that the study still continues. Every two years, our patient and dedicated research staff calls up our men and asks them if we can send them yet one more set of questions about their lives.
Many of the inner city Boston men ask us, "Why do you keep wanting to study me? My life just isn't that interesting." The Harvard men never ask that question.
(Laughter)
To get the clearest picture of these lives, we don't just send them questionnaires. We interview them in their living rooms. We get their medical records from their doctors. We draw their blood, we scan their brains, we talk to their children. We videotape them talking with their wives about their deepest concerns. And when, about a decade ago, we finally asked the wives if they would join us as members of the study, many of the women said, "You know, it's about time."
(Laughter)
So what have we learned? What are the lessons that come from the tens of thousands of pages of information that we've generated on these lives? Well, the lessons aren't about wealth or fame or working harder and harder. The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.
We've learned three big lessons about relationships. The first is that social connections are really good for us, and that loneliness kills. It turns out that people who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community, are happier, they're physically healthier, and they live longer than people who are less well connected. And the experience of loneliness turns out to be toxic. People who are more isolated than they want to be from others find that they are less happy, their health declines earlier in midlife, their brain functioning declines sooner and they live shorter lives than people who are not lonely. And the sad fact is that at any given time, more than one in five Americans will report that they're lonely.
And we know that you can be lonely in a crowd and you can be lonely in a marriage, so the second big lesson that we learned is that it's not just the number of friends you have, and it's not whether or not you're in a committed relationship, but it's the quality of your close relationships that matters. It turns out that living in the midst of conflict is really bad for our health. High-conflict marriages, for example, without much affection, turn out to be very bad for our health, perhaps worse than getting divorced. And living in the midst of good, warm relationships is protective.
Once we had followed our men all the way into their 80s, we wanted to look back at them at midlife and to see if we could predict who was going to grow into a happy, healthy octogenarian and who wasn't. And when we gathered together everything we knew about them at age 50, it wasn't their middle age cholesterol levels that predicted how they were going to grow old. It was how satisfied they were in their relationships. The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80. And good, close relationships seem to buffer us from some of the slings and arrows of getting old. Our most happily partnered men and women reported, in their 80s, that on the days when they had more physical pain, their mood stayed just as happy. But the people who were in unhappy relationships, on the days when they reported more physical pain, it was magnified by more emotional pain.
And the third big lesson that we learned about relationships and our health is that good relationships don't just protect our bodies, they protect our brains. It turns out that being in a securely attached relationship to another person in your 80s is protective, that the people who are in relationships where they really feel they can count on the other person in times of need, those people's memories stay sharper longer. And the people in relationships where they feel they really can't count on the other one, those are the people who experience earlier memory decline. And those good relationships, they don't have to be smooth all the time. Some of our octogenarian couples could bicker with each other day in and day out, but as long as they felt that they could really count on the other when the going got tough, those arguments didn't take a toll on their memories.
So this message, that good, close relationships are good for our health and well-being, this is wisdom that's as old as the hills. Why is this so hard to get and so easy to ignore? Well, we're human. What we'd really like is a quick fix, something we can get that'll make our lives good and keep them that way. Relationships are messy and they're complicated and the hard work of tending to family and friends, it's not sexy or glamorous. It's also lifelong. It never ends. The people in our 75-year study who were the happiest in retirement were the people who had actively worked to replace workmates with new playmates. Just like the millennials in that recent survey, many of our men when they were starting out as young adults really believed that fame and wealth and high achievement were what they needed to go after to have a good life. But over and over, over these 75 years, our study has shown that the people who fared the best were the people who leaned in to relationships, with family, with friends, with community.
So what about you? Let's say you're 25, or you're 40, or you're 60. What might leaning in to relationships even look like?
Well, the possibilities are practically endless. It might be something as simple as replacing screen time with people time or livening up a stale relationship by doing something new together, long walks or date nights, or reaching out to that family member who you haven't spoken to in years, because those all-too-common family feuds take a terrible toll on the people who hold the grudges.
I'd like to close with a quote from Mark Twain. More than a century ago, he was looking back on his life, and he wrote this: "There isn't time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that.
The good life is built with good relationships.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Filmed May 2015 at TEDWomen 2015
Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin: A hilarious celebration of lifelong female friendship
Legendary duo Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin have been friends for decades. In a raw, tender and wide-ranging conversation hosted by Pat Mitchell, the three discuss longevity, feminism, the differences between male and female friendship, what it means to live well and women's role in future of our planet. "I don't even know what I would do without my women friends," Fonda says. "I exist because I have my women friends."
Transcript:
Pat Mitchell: So I was thinking about female friendship a lot, and by the way, these two women, I'm very honored to say, have been my friends for a very long time, too. Jane Fonda: Yes we have.
PM: And one of the things that I read about female friendship is something that Cervantes said. He said, "You can tell a lot about someone," in this case a woman, "by the company that she keeps." So let's start with --
(Laughter)
JF: We're in big trouble.
Lily Tomlin: Hand me one of those waters, I'm extremely dry.
(Laughter)
JF: You're taking up our time. We have a very limited --
LT: Just being with her sucks the life out of me.
(Laughter)
JF: You ain't seen nothing yet. Anyway -- sorry.
PM: So tell me, what do you look for in a friend?
LT: I look for someone who has a sense of fun, who's audacious, who's forthcoming, who has politics, who has even a small scrap of passion for the planet, someone who's decent, has a sense of justice and who thinks I'm worthwhile.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
JF: You know, I was thinking this morning, I don't even know what I would do without my women friends. I mean it's, "I have my friends, therefore I am."
LT: (Laughter)
JF: No, it's true. I exist because I have my women friends. They -- You're one of them. I don't know about you. But anyway --
(Laughter)
You know, they make me stronger, they make me smarter, they make me braver. They tap me on the shoulder when I might be in need of course-correcting. And most of them are a good deal younger than me, too. You know? I mean, it's nice -- LT: Thank you
(Laughter)
JF: No, I do, I include you in that, because listen, you know -- it's nice to have somebody still around to play with and learn from when you're getting toward the end. I'm approaching -- I'll be there sooner than you
LT: No, I'm glad to have you parallel aging alongside me.
(Laughter)
JF: I'm showing you the way.
(Laughter)
LT: Well, you are and you have.
PM: Well, as we grow older, and as we go through different kinds of life's journeys, what do you do to keep your friendships vital and alive?
LT: Well you have to use a lot of --
JF: She doesn't invite me over much, I'll tell you that
LT: I have to use a lot of social media -- You be quiet now. And so --
(Laughter)
LT: And I look through my emails, I look through my texts to find my friends, so I can answer them as quickly as possible, because I know they need my counsel.
(Laughter)
They need my support, because most of my friends are writers, or activists, or actors, and you're all three ... and a long string of other descriptive phrases, and I want to get to you as soon as possible, I want you to know that I'm there for you.
JF: Do you do emojis?
LT: Oh ... JF: No?
LT: That's embarrassing. JF: I'm really into emojis.
LT: No, I spell out my -- I spell out my words of happiness and congratulations, and sadness.
JF: You spell it right out --
LT: I spell it, every letter.
(Laughter)
JF: Such a purist. You know, as I've gotten older, I've understood more the importance of friendships, and so, I really make an effort to reach out and make play dates -- not let too much time go by. I read a lot so, as Lily knows all too well, my books that I like, I send to my friends
LT: When we knew we would be here today you sent me a lot of books about women, female friendships, and I was so surprised to see how many books, how much research has been done recently --
JF: And were you grateful? LT: I was grateful.
(Laughter)
PM: And --
LT: Wait, no, it's really important because this is another example of how women are overlooked, put aside, marginalized. There's been very little research done on us, even though we volunteered lots of times.
JF: That's for sure
(Laughter)
LT: This is really exciting, and you all will be interested in this. The Harvard Medical School study has shown that women who have close female friendships are less likely to develop impairments -- physical impairments as they age, and they are likely to be seen to be living much more vital, exciting --
JF: And longer --
LT: Joyful lives.
JF: We live five years longer than men.
LT: I think I'd trade the years for joy.
(Laughter)
LT: But the most important part is they found -- the results were so exciting and so conclusive -- the researchers found that not having close female friends is detrimental to your health, as much as smoking or being overweight.
JF: And there's something else, too --
LT: I've said my part, so ...
(Laughter)
JF: OK, well, listen to my part, because there's an additional thing. Because they only -- for years, decades -- they only researched men when they were trying to understand stress, only very recently have they researched what happens to women when we're stressed, and it turns out that when we're stressed -- women, our bodies get flooded by oxytocin. Which is a feel-good, calming, stress-reducing hormone. Which is also increased when we're with our women friends. And I do think that's one reason why we live longer. And I feel so bad for men because they don't have that. Testosterone in men diminishes the effects of oxytocin.
LT: Well, when you and I and Dolly made "9 to 5" ...
JF: Oh --
LT: We laughed, we did, we laughed so much, we found we had so much in common and we're so different. Here she is, like Hollywood royalty, I'm like a tough kid from Detroit, [Dolly's] a Southern kid from a poor town in Tennessee, and we found we were so in sync as women, and we must have -- we laughed -- we must have added at least a decade onto our lifespans.
JF: I think -- we sure crossed our legs a lot.
(Laughter) If you know what I mean.
LT: I think we all know what you mean.
(Laughter)
PM: You're adding decades to our lives right now. So among the books that Jane sent us both to read on female friendship was one by a woman we admire greatly, Sister Joan Chittister, who said about female friendship that women friends are not just a social act, they're a spiritual act. Do you think of your friends as spiritual? Do they add something spiritual to your lives?
LT: Spiritual -- I absolutely think that. Because -- especially people you've known a long time, people you've spent time with -- I can see the spiritual essence inside them, the tenderness, the vulnerability. There's actually kind of a love, an element of love in the relationship. I just see deeply into your soul.
PM: Do you think that, Jane --
LT: But I have special powers.
JF: Well, there's all kinds of friends. There's business friends, and party friends, I've got a lot of those.
(Laughter)
But the oxytocin-producing friendships have ... They feel spiritual because it's a heart opening, right? You know, we go deep. And -- I find that I shed tears a lot with my intimate friends. Not because I'm sad but because I'm so touched and inspired by them.
LT: And you know one of you is going to go soon.
(Laughter)
PM: Well, two of us are sitting here, Lily, which one are you talking about?
(Laughter) And I always think, when women talk about their friendships, that men always look a little mystified. What are the differences, in your opinion, between men friendships and women friendships?
JF: There's a lot of difference, and I think we have to have a lot of empathy for men -
(Laughter)
that they don't have what we have. Which I think may be why they die sooner.
(Laughter)
I have a lot of compassion for men, because women, no kidding, we -- women's relationships, our friendships are full disclosure, we go deep. They're revelatory. We risk vulnerability -- this is something men don't do. I mean how many times have I asked you, "Am I doing OK?" "Did I really screw up there?"
PM: You're doing great.
(Laughter)
JF: But I mean, we ask questions like that of our women friends, and men don't. You know, people describe women's relationships as face-to-face, whereas men's friendships are more side-by-side.
LT: I mean most of the time men don't want to reveal their emotions, they want to bury deeper feelings. I mean, that's the general, conventional thought. They would rather go off in their man cave and watch a game or hit golf balls, or talk about sports, or hunting, or cars or have sex. I mean, it's just the kind of -- it's a more manly behavior
JF: You meant -- LT: They talk about sex. I meant they might have sex if they could get somebody in their man cave to
(Laughter)
JF: You know something, though, that I find very interesting -- and again, psychologists didn't know this until relatively recently -- is that men are born every bit as relational as women are. If you look at films of newborn baby boys and girls, you'll see the baby boys just like the girls, gazing into their mother's eyes, you know, needing that relational exchange of energy. When the mother looks away, they could see the dismay on the child, even the boy would cry. They need relationship. So the question is why, as they grow older, does that change? And the answer is patriarchal culture, which says to boys and young men that to be needing of relationship, to be emotional with someone is girly. That a real man doesn't ask directions or express a need, they don't go to doctors if they feel bad. They don't ask for help. There's a quote that I really like, "Men fear that becoming 'we' will erase his 'I'." You know, his sense of self. Whereas women's sense of self has always been kind of porous. But our "we" is our saving grace, it's what makes us strong. It's not that we're better than men, we just don't have our masculinity to prove
LT: And, well --
JF: That's a Gloria Steinem quote. So we can express our humanity -- LT: I know who Gloria Steinem is.
JF: I know you know who she is, but I think it's a -
(Laughter)
No, but it's a great quote, I think. We're not better than men, we just don't have our masculinity to prove. And that's really important.
LT: But men are so inculcated in the culture to be comfortable in the patriarchy. And we've got to make something different happen.
JF: Women's friendships are like a renewable source of power.
LT: Well, that's what's exciting about this subject. It's because our friendships -- female friendships are just a hop to our sisterhood, and sisterhood can be a very powerful force, to give the world -- to make it what it should be -- the things that humans desperately need.
PM: It is why we're talking about it, because women's friendships are, as you said, Jane, a renewable source of power. So how do we use that power?
JF: Well, women are the fastest growing demographic in the world, especially older women. And if we harness our power, we can change the world. And guess what? We need to.
(Applause)
And we need to do it soon. And one of the things that we need to do -- and we can do it as women -- for one thing, we kind of set the consumer standards. We need to consume less. We in the Western world need to consume less and when we buy things, we need to buy things that are made locally, when we buy food, we need to buy food that's grown locally. We are the ones that need to get off the grid. We need to make ourselves independent from fossil fuels. And the fossil fuel companies -- the Exxons and the Shell Oils and those bad guys -- cause they are -- are going to tell us that we can't do it without going back to the Stone Age. You know, that the alternatives just aren't quite there yet, and that's not true. There are countries in the world right now that are living mostly on renewable energy and doing just fine. And they tell us that if we do wean ourselves from fossil fuel that we're going to be back in the Stone Age, and in fact, if we begin to use renewable energy, and not drill in the Arctic, and not drill --
LT: Oh, boy.
JF: And not drill in the Alberta tar sands -- Right. That we will be -- there will be more democracy and more jobs and more well-being, and it's women that are going to lead the way.
LT: Maybe we have the momentum to start a third-wave feminist movement with our sisterhood around the world, with women we don't see, women we may never meet, but we join together that way, because -- Aristotle said -- most people -- people would die without male friendships. And the operative word here was "male." Because they thought that friendships should be between equals and women were not considered equal -
JF: They didn't think we had souls even, the Greeks.
LT: No, exactly. That shows you just how limited Aristotle was.
(Laughter)
And wait, no, here's the best part. It's like, you know, men do need women now. The planet needs women. The US Constitution needs women. We are not even in the Constitution.
JF: You're talking about the Equal Rights Amendment.
LT: Right. Justice Ginsberg said something like -- every constitution that's been written since the end of World War II included a provision that made women citizens of equal stature, but ours does not. So that would be a good place to start. Very, very mild -
JF: Right.
(Applause)
And gender equality, it's like a tide, it would lift all boats, not just women.
PM: Needing new role models on how to do that. How to be friends, how to think about our power in different ways, as consumers, as citizens of the world, and this is what makes Jane and Lily a role model of how women can be friends -- for a very long time, and even if they occasionally disagree.
Thank you. Thank you both.
(Applause)
JF: Thanks.
LT: Thank you.
JF: Thank you.
(Applause
Source: www.ted.com
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