Why Craft Matters Now More Than Ever.
Special Friday Dispatch: New TEDx Boulder talk...
I’ve got something very special for you today.
Thus the late-breaking, Friday afternoon dispatch…
When I was twelve, I cracked open a mysterious wooden briefcase that’d been passed on to me from a great grandfather I’d never known.
My “safe-cracking” tool of choice, a butter knife.
What I found inside would change my life.
Even to this day. It keeps reminding me who I am, and why I’m here.
Last month, I shared the whole story, and the profound truth it revealed to me for the first time ever on the TEDxBoulder stage.
I’ve spoken on stages of all sizes for years. To thousands of people.
But, this talk was so personal and important to me, I might’ve been a bit, how do I put this…terrified.
Worked insanely hard on it. And, actually practiced so much, I lost my voice for the two days before the talk. Literally did not know if it’d come back until the moment I took the stage, madly crunching numbing lozenges, before facing out to 1,000 people, saying a prayer, and letting it fly.
It was a bit croaky, but it was there. And, I neither threw up, nor pee’d myself (though it was touch-n-go on both for a moment).
Minutes ago, the video of that talk went live on the TEDx Talks Youtube channel!!!
At it’s heart, it’s about what we lose when we stop making things with our hands, and what we stand to reclaim when we take the experience back.
It’s a quick 10-minutes. I hope it’ll stir something in you, maybe even start a conversation, and inspire you to rediscover a part of you that, for so many of us, has been dormant, stifled, for way too long.
If it touches something in you, it’d mean the world to me if you would give it a thumbs up, maybe even comment over on Youtube, then even share it far and wide (or at least with a single person who needs the see it).
That’s how ideas worth sharing change lives at scale. Starting with yours.
Waiting, okay, a bit nervously, to hear what you think.
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!!!!!
Big BIG love,
Jonathan
PS - And, of course, love to hear your thoughts in the comments back here, too. WOOOHOOOO!!!
Your wonderful talk so resonates with me right now, as I am transitioning to a new phase in my life where the act of creation, the process rather than the goal, is my priority. I especially loved your reference to the smell and feel of rubber cement on your fingertips, that is such a visceral memory of childhood! This week my great-niece and I had way too much fun creating fabric collages on recycled Styrofoam packing material. I used Mod Podge for the first time in many years, and was trying to explain to her how great it felt to peal the dried bits from my hands... For her, at age 10, this was just glue, part of her everyday life. For me, it was a revelation!
To chill out - I get lost in games on my iPad... your right, I need to get lost is something of my own creation. It would be so much more fulfilling...