Isabel Allende:
Summary: Isabel Allende is a novelist and a memoirist who has written several stories of passion. In this TED Talk, she shared her story of how she lives her life passionately despite the fact that she now is 71 years old. She started with the introduction about her age and the family's members' ages, including the dog's. She made a point of how society enforces the idea of aging on people as most of us would think that we would start to age around 65, which is when we get Medicare. Precisely, aging started since birth and people have always been getting older but they did not notice that until they started to have wrinkles. She also talked about how the other people have done great things despite their circumstances such as a woman that was disabled due to a terrible car accident but she still had a positive attitude and thought about herself surfing in the ocean. Then, she argued about how her body was getting old and starting to fall apart, meanwhile her brain was staying strong and positive. As Allende shared her experiences and things that she has learned to let go, she reminded people that the greatest things that she gained from getting old was spirituality and freedom. She realized that passion was what she wanted to keep by herself as she keeps on living. By telling the stories of the others, she showed the audience that her life was inspired by other people. She made it clear that even though time can make human body weaken and fall apart, spirituality and passion are what would keep the brain to stay young.
The purpose of this story is to share the experiences of the person who lives 71 years and to inspire those who are still at a young age that want to live a more passionate life. This TED Talk was a lesson to educate people how to live life more passionately and encourage having the positive attitude in them as a way to lighten their life. Allende's intentions were to invite the audience to change their lifestyle as to have a positive mindset and learn to let things go, as well as to communicate the idea that passion can help to fight against the difficulty that one could face.
The tactics that Allende used as the tools to persuade her audience were involving using Logos and Pathos. When using Logos, she shared several accounts of other people. She meant to give their stories as inspirational tools which would help to inspire the audience, as well as to say that she was inspired by their stories. She was making a personal connection with the audience between her experiences and the other people's experiences. Humor was also involved as a way to entertain people but its main purpose was to emphasize the idea of making a positive mindset. Another persuade technique was using Pathos. As she was sharing the stories of other people, these stories were mostly of people who have special circumstances such as having been in a car accident or saving 12.000 girls and changing the cultural value of a country. These stories were appealing to the audience's emotion and made people more related to the main story.
I chose this TED Talk because as a female, I think that the idea of getting old and losing all the things that I'm now having is somehow terrifying (because the unknown is always scary and more powerful than anything else). Therefore, not knowing what will happen in life later makes me nervous at times. When I had to face difficulty I would be overwhelmed and stressed out so much that it is nearly impossible for me to be positive. I was training myself to become more positive and to have stronger mentality. I had learned many things through the passion that I have towards Kpop, I noticed that I have become a better person as I stopped holding grudges or hating on people, as well as making false judgments about others. There are many sides of myself that I want to fix and perfect them. This TED Talk really inspired me in many aspects and it taught me that there are people out there who are trying to figure themselves out and also wanting to live their lives passionately, just like me!
