The Power of Dreams and Memories | Jeff Gould | TEDxUSD

I work at a funeral home and I help people who are alive plan their own funerals and then also later on after they've died I will maybe officiate at that funeral oh they say see I'm the guy that people avoid at parties although I will say that this job that I have has taught me more than anything else I have ever done my life has changed so fundamentally by talking to people on a regular basis who are 20 30 40 years older than me and the things that I learn from them are invaluable and I thought maybe you'd like to hear some of those stories and maybe they will affect your life as well and that's why the topic of my conversation today is the power of dreams and memories let us first talk about memories I think stories do the best job of instructing and this story is called the two delusional ladies I met the first lady on Monday and part of my job what she wanted to plan her own funeral is to find out about her life and she started describing it the following way it was wonderful I grew up in the prairies of South Dakota on a small farm and I had watched the Sun Rise every day and a beautiful crisp air and I'd help my mom gather eggs from the chicken coop and I'd help my dad with the chores and then we'd walk five miles to school and we'd pick wildflowers it was delightful my granddaughter says oh grandma mom I wish that I could be a little girl with you two and we would have so much fun together and I say oh I know but those days will never happen again there will never be another time as wonderful as when I grew up I said okay and after she left I thought to myself this lady is a little bit delusional the next day I talked to I mean this is the next day I talked to another lady and I said well is again she wanted to plan her funeral and I said well tell me about your life it was horrible I grew up in the dirty thirties and the plains in a small town a small farm we every day was a fight for survival I'd have to get up and help with the chores we'd walk five miles to school in horrible weather conditions it was miserable now I having just talked to the other lady of the day before I thought well wasn't there anything that you enjoyed like maybe a Christmas or something and she said no and after she left I thought I that lady is delusional too now let's just look at that word delusional delusional means seeing the world not as it really is if that's our definition then we are all delusional aren't we because we cannot see the entire world at one time because we're too small our ability to to to gather in that information we just don't have a big enough mind and not only that the data that does come into our mind is like drinking out of a fire hose all day long our mind is busily not trying to remember things but forget things vast amounts of data unimportant stuff we're trying to get rid of most of it so we can maintain our sanity and the little bits left those are our memories and for reasons that are interesting to me the first person's memories the ones she selected were quite different from the second persons although their lives were fundamentally quite a bit the same and the questions I asked myself after talking to those people which one was happier and which one would I like to be memories are particularly important to me my mom has Alzheimer's she's in the last stages of that I talked to my dad once a week this very morning these are his memories of talking to my mother when he visits her in the nursing home it's terrible I can't hardly stand to go she was the smartest woman I knew and now she cannot complete a sentence she knows me some days she doesn't remember you most days every day gets worse I wish I didn't have to see her by the way everything he said is true this is also what's true when he comes in she looks at her and her face breaks open into a big smile there's my Billy there's my Billy Boy oh he is such a boy and then they talk and then she fades out how interesting that's my memory that my mother is holding on to the most important memory and that will be the last one that she has and that is that she loves my father I cannot control this terrible disease with that memory that's the one I want that's the one I choose to keep now you think about this aren't we all in essence our memories you are your memories everything that you remember think about that is you I have heard psychologists talk about the ability to increase happiness but after these situations and visiting with these people I now recognizes as important as diet and exercise and that is working on your memories a couple of exercises that I do I have a journal every day I write down three things I'm grateful for three things I'm grateful for that day and here's the sacred you can't say the same thing over and over again family health of friends okay cheating every day has to be something completely different that gets to be hard to do so eventually what you find yourself doing is in the course of your day searching for little things to be thankful about so you can remember them that night so actively you are starting to remember the very best parts of your day the other thing I do at night I talked to my wife Libby we say what was the best thing that happened today let me go back and we think about the best thing that happened that not the worst thing because that's where most likely to say you should have seen traffic today what was the best thing and by recalling that and saying it out loud we are in essence living it twice in increasing the odds that we will remember the very best part you see I have a dream and the dream is that when I am 85 years old I will say with confidence that I lived a wonderful life and when asked for proof I will bring memories and detailed data that prove the life I led and that is something that I am building every single day because I want to be the setter the first lady not the second lady and you also have that choice I want to talk about dreams now this lady I'll call the double lung transplant lady I got a call in March Jeff would you officiate at the funeral for so-and-so I said so and so wait a minute I was that I saw her in January at her husband's funeral she looked great she was full of life and vital and they said oh no she was in terrible health she was a double lung transplant 14 years it said 14 years uh-huh that seems like a long time as far as they know that's a record 14 years on a double lung transplant well now I needed to find out more two things first off whenever she went to the doctor she went like she was dressing for an evening gala dressed to the nines with their best out fit make up the whole whole works why because she said I am NOT going to be seen as a patient I will be seen as a person and they will know that something to remember the second thing was she had cultivated the habit of dreaming she was a voracious reader at her bedside now think about this we know that the worst time is after your spouse dies almost everybody goes through its severe depression but her habit of dreaming was so overwhelming that she could not let that go at her bedside after she died they found a pad of paper with two dreams on it the first one I will learn the cross-stitch there's a whole stack of two to do books on how to cross stitch the second I'm traveling the Cuba she had heard that Cuba was open for tourism and she was actively planning on going to Cuba boy I thought I would tell my dad about that you know this is power of of dreaming so dad do you have any dreams I'm I'm too old to dream so this is Dolores story that's the name I'll use I talked to Dolores I know her well enough that when I asked her how she was she told me the truth she said I just came from the jail the prison where I visited my grandson um when he was born his parents wanted to put him up for adoption so my husband and I decided that we would adopt him we were 62 we did shortly afterwards my husband died and I became the sole parent at the age of 62 of this child I loved him but he had troubles he had fetal alcohol syndrome and some other things that made him difficult to handle he would have violent outbursts at the age of nine it was determined that it was too dangerous for him for her to be his parent but she did not give up on him she poured herself into that boy she advocated for him she found him the very best care and by the time he was a teenager she had found a couple who would raise kids in a foster family but more of a family unit and they specifically dealt with kids with this kind of issues and problems and under their tutelage and love this child finally at the age of 17 flourished into who he she knew the person he could become and then after that the natural mother sued to get guardianship back and she won in courts and that boy was taken out of that and fell into a world of chaos and drug abuse and he was sent to prison for assault and in prison he assaulted a guard and so was thrown into a maximum security situation and she still did not give up on him she visited him once a week and it's just like in the movies right the shackles around the wrists that are attached to the waist and the around the ankles as you shuffled into a closet and there's the plexiglass this thick and the holes do it in the phone and just that morning he had said grandma don't come anymore it's too hard and that is the sorrow and suffering that this Delores was carrying and I say that because all of us have some burden that pushes us down so that you can hear what she said next but I need to tell you my good news my birthday is next week I'll be 85 years old and I'm giving myself a birthday present I'm joining a gym I said yeah she says I love to garden and I need to get my strength up and today I'm meeting again with my pastor to go visiting she explained I approached my pastor and I said this I know is a silly question but do you ever need people like me just to visit with people and he looked at her he said Delores my wife and I have been on our knees for 14 months every morning praying for someone like you yes what would I do come with me the first place they visited was a woman bedridden at home catatonic that means unresponsive to anything just staring at a wall she'd been that way for 12 years Dolores said I was a nurse things have changed but some things haven't changed I walked over to her in the bed and I just put my hand on her cheek and she went how long had it been since that woman had ever been touched by anyone and her pastor said now you know why I need you and so she said well so I've got to go and she walked out of that room with her burdens on wings of a dream for who she could be I do that too it's fun actually you should sit down and try it sometime I encourage it every day you should sit down with a piece of paper and you should dream what do I want to do what would it be like if I and you go to that place and in great detail you describe it what are you wearing what does it look like what does it feel like what are you thinking you describe every aspect of that dream in great detail and when you're done you will have a smile on your face and say wouldn't that be nice here's what's funny you should change that too won't that be nice because here's what's interesting these dreams they have a way of coming true once you live a life or after I'm gone they described the life I led and the things I did and they'll shake their head and say wow that guy was living the dream you know it's funny just as an example long ago I'm not not that long ago I got to thinking to myself what would it be like to do a TED talk thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 41,046

Rating: 4.827476 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Life, Dreams, Memory

Id: a_sNos4Po58

Length: 20min 12sec (1212 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 29 2017