Choices, suicide and apple cores: Adam Moen at TEDxUMN

powerful hug so what is it about apples that is so interesting maybe it's it's how they sort of represent nutrition apple a day keeps the doctor away or how it represents gratefulness appreciation you give an apple to a teacher in the first day of class or maybe it's that old relationship adage apple of my eye and I was thinking to myself what are other ways that the Apple has infiltrated our culture I just kept on reciting Apple Apple and I couldn't come up with anything at all so I googled it and the first thing that came up was apple.com and by now you know I'm a super out-of-touch 22 year old who's typing a speech on Adele but today I'm gonna talk to you about how an apple really changed my life and maybe not change my life but taught me that I had the capability to change my life it's it was it was an afternoon my junior year I was sitting at my time and my kitchen table in my tiny West Bank apartment and I just finished eating the outside sugary portion in the Apple and I was looking at the core and I was thinking about this core and I was thinking about all the bad things about it you know if you leave it out it goes Brown or if you you know if you it must be hard and distasteful and people throw it away and and this is basically how I saw every single situation that I encountered I would always be looking for the negative things of life I would wake up and go to class and be frustrated with teachers thinking this material is not any way relevant to me the homework is bad or and then I'd go to work and I'd shut down other people's ideas and I'd I'd criticize other things that I had done and other other work accomplishments and I'd go home and then I'd get down on myself for not cooking well enough or not not working out hard enough and not spending enough time on homework watching you know too much time on Facebook or whatever it is and then finally I'd get to my bed and and flop down and I'd go over every single thing that had happened throughout the day and think to myself tomorrow I'm gonna be perfect I'm gonna correct that mistake that I did today I'm not going to do that again and tomorrow that'll be the best day ever and then I finally after two-three hours of just horrible excruciating rumination I'd I'd drift off to sleep to wake up and and then go over this whole cycle for about two three more days or four and then the weekend would jump and if you're a business student like me the weekend was on Thursday which I enjoyed and what I loved about the weekend was it was my opportunity to sort of break away of this really mundane purposeless life that I was living I didn't really know why I was doing anything that I was doing I just knew that you know I was supposed to be here and you know be involved in getting good grades and thinking about my career and all this stuff but then the weekend would come and I could sort of break away from all that stuff and so I would look I would distress like a lot of students on campus here I'd I'd consumed controlled substances drugs and alcohol and what I loved is that when I started there would be a perspective change the way I viewed life would be a little bit different and it was so intriguing to me that I that I would push and push and push and get further and further and further and see how how far I could really you know change this perspective this life and it led me to some really destructive behaviors I've made a lot of bad choices and then I'd wake up the next day and I look back and I get down on myself for doing dumb stuff and then I get down on myself for being down and then you know I'd have to go back to school and then I was on the cycle of a few days and a few knee and then a few days on a few days off and it was really tough just to walk around and sort of not understand anything about why I'm existing on campus not feeling connected to really anything at all and some days I just couldn't handle it I mean some days it would get to the point where I'd be walking across the Washington Avenue bridge and I'd put my right hand on the railing and slow down then I just peer over the side I jumped off here what I'd I walk a little further I jumped off here what I died in some days if it was really bad I'd whirl around and I'd grab the railing with both of my knuckles with my both my hands white-knuckled my body would begin to shake and every single thought in my head would fire just jump just swing your legs over just end it there's no reason for you to be here anyways and all of the sudden there would be this feeling that would creep up through my hands forearms biceps shoulders and chest and it would sort of grab me right here and it would be so intense that I would have to let go of the railing and continue walking and I realized that I then I that I was actually alive but I had to tempt death to feel like I was a human being which is a bad place to be and so I'm in this state of mind and I'm sitting at my kitchen table my tiny West Bank apartment looking at this Apple and I decided you know what I'm sick of this I'm sick of just doing all this stuff for no reason I'm gonna eat this Apple core and so I quick rack my brain through miss Noreen's by biology lectures and determined I will not be in extreme physical discomfort or near death again if I eat this thing so I decide all right let's just do this turn the Apple on its side and I chomp down on the bottom and and you know it's not a whole lot different it's a little green fuzzy thing or whatever but and and and then I I get to the core and I'm looking at this core and my mother used to cut out the hard parts of my apple slices and Here I am sort of raging thinking about eating this Apple and I decide alright let's just do it I bite down again and suddenly there's this explosion of flavors and textures that I never even knew existed I'm hooked so I devour the rest of the Apple run to the fridge and eat all the other ones too and I'll never forget this I was on the bus one day I just finished eating this Apple and I was feeling so good I was like oh yeah what a delicious snack and then all of a sudden this woman she looks at me Geo's did you did you should see that whole Apple I said yes did you see that whole Apple but I got that same sort of uplifting feeling I was noticed I felt good about being alive and it was awesome so I changed my entire Apple consumption scheduler on my social calendar so I had a timed out perfectly I would walk to miss Joanne's Iverson's 12:45 business communication lecture sit down in my chair about five minutes late which I apologize about to the rest of the class garner a little bit of attention you know stretch out oh look over here have nothing left with the core and I'd finish it you sitting there there were some Snickers and steers but over time people stopped caring and I had had other successes in my life that I was noticed that I was noticed for that I had sort of let go but this for some reason I really cared about eating these apples and being recognized for it and all the sudden people didn't care anymore and that made me mad so I went underwent the most intense period of self-reflection that I ever have and I was going to get to the bottom of this what is really going on here am I really carrying a bag of apples around with me and eating them in public places on campus so people will talk to me am I really giving everybody else the freedom to tell me if something is good or not I can't even feel good about just eating an apple I need somebody to say yeah that's cool am I really that sad that I can't even feel good about anything I do without external validation and the answer is yes so that was a big Apple and you see what I found out is that my entire life I have been put in this box with my peers and an administrator comes along boss teacher and they say okay great I'm gonna come back in ten seconds ten minutes ten hours ten days ten years and we're gonna rank you first to last now your job is to control these three or four variables we've controlled everything else in the whole world so you don't have to worry about anything except three or four variables go so we go and then the administrator comes back and okay people at the top you did good you're good stamp label people in the middle your average label people at the bottom you're bad you're not working hard enough labeled and so in my whole life I've been fortunate enough to be in settings where I've been able to excel at controlling these situations where there are two to three variables but all the sudden in my life there's an infinite amount of variables and having no idea what to do I haven't been trained to do this and it's causing me a lot of pain and people are telling me though you're good no don't worry you're good it's all right so what do I do well I balance things by coming up with every single reason possible in my mind that I'm not good so the Apple really taught me that you know I was just going outside and looking for that administrator in my life on everything I did that I couldn't even feel good about anything that I was doing because I didn't really understand how to find anything I cared about in life nothing had ever prepared me for all of this uncertainty that is life and until I encountered this Apple and it made me really understand that I have the power to actually feel good about what I'm doing I have the power to do you know be joyful I don't have to have somebody come along and tell me yes you can feel joy now that's a good thing so the point is not to go out and eat a bunch of apple cores I just want to say you know there are a lot of decisions that we have in our lives and other people have done a lot before us but at the end of the day there are really only two options when you're looking at that apple core you can either set it aside or you can take a bite it's your choice

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 38,318

Rating: 4.7692308 out of 5

Keywords: tedx, TEDxUMN, Lifestyle, Business, tedx talk, English, Education, Mental Health, United States Of America (Country), ted talk, ted talks, ted, tedx talks, ted x, Finding Purpose

Id: uwBHVzAvJqY

Length: 13min 9sec (789 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 05 2013