Am I capable of being loved? - Daniel Tammet - CDI 2011

[Music] thank you I can see that there's some some lighting here on the screen it says gracias so I will start by saying gracias to everyone for coming here today and I want a big gracias to undress and to his team for organizing this amazing event it's my first time in Mexico I'm very honored and glad to be here and primero Dios it won't be not my last time here as well what is love this has been the question of my life it has followed me unceasingly at its heart lies another question more important to me still am i someone capable of being loved I asked these questions because my mind had a different childhood to that of most today I'm a writer I have a life filled with friends and a loving relationship I live in Paris city of wine and art and history but I did not start out there life for me began in a small poor working-class part of London I grew up a small boy in what became a very large family I'm the oldest of nine children perhaps that's why having to keep track of all of my siblings I became so good at numbers I was unlike the other children I didn't play like a little boy plays I didn't smile like a little boy smiles I hardly talked at all instead I counted people made no sense to me they were too big too loud to a vatic I preferred the company of numbers they I could understand every number to me has its own shape its own color its own texture its own personality for is shy like me 37 is lumpy like oatmeal 1 1 1 is white and shiny I could not play with the other children so I played with numbers instead and they became my friends my medical condition remained a puzzle it had no name or Vava it went by a wide range of aliases extremely shy I was called because I was frightened of the other children I did not know how to interact with them or highly sensitive because I couldn't stand noise I had to be protected from southern surprises my father a very plain speaking man called me cack-handed it's the British expression for somebody who is very clumsy very poor coordination for example it took me many years to learn how to ride a bicycle or even how to swim as though the water did not want to carry me in the 1980s my years of childhood high-functioning autism did not exist crying fits panic attacks epileptic seizures all these and other symptoms described my mind to doctors but the professionals drew a blank I went to a normal school there were no gifted child programs at the time and because I could never find on the blackboard the colors of the words and the numbers as I saw them I'm in my mind I felt very bored but I was a good student a very good student I learned very quickly that was the upside of my condition and I spent much time with my head in books at the age of AIDS I remember experiencing a very powerful sensation deep inside me and not knowing what it meant eventually I discovered that this feeling is what people call loneliness and for the first time in my life I realized I was not alone that I needed other people and I wanted very much to have a friend I would lie in my bed at night staring up at the ceiling [Music] wondering what it would be like to have a friend I had no idea in the playground at school I began watching the other children studying them closely like a scientist studying a strange species of animal trying to figure out how they work how they operate I studied the other children watched them as they played together and in this way little by little my social skill was improved I learned how to look somebody in the eye how to understand somebody's gestures how to read their body English how to tell a joke I made the friendships of immigrant children they too different in their own ways different color of skin different accent how difference is what we had in common but still I felt lonely as a teenager like all teenagers I wanted desperately to fit in to find my place but there was no room for me anywhere I wanted to be closer to someone and at that time understanding closeness to literally I would stand very close to somebody in the playground or in the school and I would stand so that I could feel the heat of their body against my skin and for me this is what it meant to be close to somebody of course I still had very much to learn but I did not learn this at university at the age of 18 I decided to travel instead I had read somewhere that travel is what people do in order to find themselves and at that time I still had no sense clear sense of myself of who I was the kind of person I could one day be my memory was composed of many fragments bits and pieces of emotions and ideas without context to bring them all together into a unified whole I applied instead with success to a volunteer scheme for young adults with handicaps and other difficulties and I was sent I was posted to Eastern Europe to a small country called Lithuania and it's there that I taught English for one year it was a turning point for me my students many of them were twice my age or more made me feel welcome in spite of my eccentricities or perhaps because of them they encouraged me and my confidence grew in my native country I had always felt so strange and so different but here in Lithuania in another land another language I felt less foreign plus when I behaved a little oddly from time to time I now had the perfect excuse my students just considered it part of my being British difference I now knew needn't be a disability in itself this experience put me in good stead for my next endeavor early in 2004 at the age of 25 I traveled to the city of Oxford in England I'd spent the past winter learning something by heart and now I was to go and recite it what I had learned in fund for public I was as you can imagine extremely nervous I had decided to speak to the world directly in my own way I no longer felt the need to be like somebody else I had learned the number pi pi being the most famous number in mathematics it's in a rational number which means you cannot express it as a fraction and it's infinite in its decimal expansion meaning that it goes on forever even if you had a size a piece of paper the size of the universe you could never have enough space to write all of its digits down in this number pi simple as a circle yet complex enough to go on without end I had found something that I could sing [Music] i sat and for over five hours I recited this number for memory twenty two thousand five hundred and fourteen digits I did not make one mistake it was like speaking my first language as I recited the digits I thought that I spoke about myself all of me the whole of my life every moment it was an act of complete self disclosure and as the mathematicians checked every digit accuracy the public listened they came from every walk of life some wore ties and suits others had shorts a more Mickey Mouse hats there was one moment when all of a sudden my mind went blank I had recited over 16,000 digits and for one moment I could not remember anything at all all of the colors everything the textures and the pictures the shapes everything disappeared and then after some moments I started to feel an itching sensation in my head the numbers came back to me they returned to me they were loyal to me and it was like running a marathon and the numbers they came and all that I had spoken of all the things that I had lived through all my moments of happiness and joy sadness and loneliness of despair and faith they cheered me on they were my audience they were my public when I finished at last I looked up the people were applauding me but some of their faces had changed the skin on their cheeks was wet that been crying then I knew that what I had said in numbers had touched him somehow pi was like my love poem to a life my own that had been at once so strange and yet so familiar today I write books and essays I travel the world I move ever forward but I can never forget the place from where I come the colors and shapes of my childhood the people who taught me finally what it is to love and to be loved in return thank you glasses [Music] you [Applause]

Channel: LaCiudaddelasIdeas

Views: 41,589

Keywords: andres roemer, roemer, ciudad de las ideas, grupo salinas, poder cívico, congreso, mentes brillantes, ideas, pláticas, conferencia, ciencia, pensar, puebla, conocimiento, pensamiento, idea, cdi, cdipuebla, talks, speakers, ted

Id: GzpZb10P1WQ

Length: 16min 45sec (1005 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 17 2017