My extraordinary steps

[Applause]

good morning

gonna try that one more time okay hi

good morning

thank you hello everybody my name is tam

england and as of my 20th cycle on earth

i am currently a freelance actress

mc and model and most importantly a

university student

now the f tedx fptu university ho chi

minh city

stage today is reserved for

extraordinary steps

and that is what i believe i’m brought

in to tell you about

and on my slide presentation

right here is a picture of a compass now

this is a little device we use to

navigate and find our way but i truly

believe that within every single one of

is an inner one of these a moral compass

and i’m going to tell you a summarized

version of how i followed

this little device for 20 years

especially through the most

extraordinary year that i’ve had so far

which is my year

of being 14. so growing up

i was uh a very very curious child

i grabbed every single book i could get

and read

with this certain passion and i also saw

a lot of foreign television

so disney channel cartoon network all of

that

so in turn i learned a lot of english

even

outside of the school curriculum

without taking extracurricular classes

and that led me to this one

event in my life where i was in fifth

grade

which means i was 10 years old and my

father who’s in the audience right now

he handed me an examination paper

for the graduation exam for high

schoolers

in the topic of english and i completed

that

within 20 minutes a few weeks later

he returned with another sheet of exam

and it was

the d major university entrance exam

for those same high schoolers that year

and i completed it

within 30 minutes before giving up

because it was very hard

but tallying up the scores i received 8

points

and 5 points for each exam

designed for 18 year olds when i was

10 years old and i would say that

those are some satisfying results

and i’ve also had a really soft spot

for the arts growing up and that is

something that grew and grew with me

as i became who i am today and that kind

of accumulated

in me becoming an emcee model and

actress

for the past four years now most

noticeably

in the movie mukbi which premiered

last year now all of this

might sound really flashy and

extraordinary i would say

but i promise you there is absolutely

no magic behind all of this

now i’m going to ask you do you know how

a compass is made

and i’m talking about the most ancient

compasses like the

most early the earliest version of it

so the earliest compasses were made of a

sort of case

water and a magnetized needle so the

function of it

is a magnetized needle will respond to

the earth’s

magnetic field and always point

north which is that direction but here’s

the thing

in earliest versions of it without water

lifting the needle off of the case the

needle

will not be able to spin and here’s a

fun fact about me

growing up i was a notoriously difficult

child to raise and teach

i was very hyper i had a very short

attention span

and i was very very reckless all traits

of which would lead to

a lot of trouble but it was exactly the

environment

that raised me that allowed me to become

the best version of myself they were the

water

to my needle and what is this

environment what is this water

well actually it’s my family and

my parents sitting right there so when i

was growing up

they did they’re very very best to

cultivate the environment around me

to help it foster my growth they made

reading fun they made me excited about

books they took me

to see shows like i sue

musical place that inspired my love for

language and arts up until this very day

and it is with their love and care that

let me be a happy child even despite my

shortcomings

and that’s what eventually

allowed me to achieve all of the amazing

things that i did

i was the best version of myself and

some of my achievements

were proof of that

but here’s the thing that is not always

the case

environments can change way more

drastically

and way more severely than a person ever

can

and that is a reality that i came face

to face with

when i had to leave the security of my

parents embrace

and enter into middle school

out of the 20 years that i have spent

being alive on this earth

the four years that i was in middle

school was the absolute hardest

because i was bullied for the entire

period of time

on and off from

nasty remarks to gossip to a slap across

my face

it escalated very quickly and i had very

little time to register and i

internalized that

and couldn’t tell anybody about it

because how could i

speak of something i couldn’t even

process

at first so i responded the only way

i knew how to poorly and very very

bitterly

i told you i was a very stubborn and a

very reckless child right

without a nourishing and supportive

environment

all of that came surfacing once again

i was bitterly harsh towards people i

disliked

and i wanted to win the approval of my

bullies

so much i adopted the mannerisms

but very soon after i became very very

scared

of the person i was i was cruel

bitter and so tired

with all of that in mind i couldn’t have

the mental capacity for studying

something that i did very well on up

until that very point

and my grades absolutely plummeted

i’ve never done worse academically in my

life

in turn i had to develop certain

coping mechanisms to deal with the

stress

and deal with the tension within me and

honestly

those coping mechanisms were far from

being healthy

i self-isolated i stayed up until 3

4 a.m in the morning reading so much i

tired myself

until i accidentally fell asleep and

woke up the next day

at 6 00 a.m to go to class

and a high at the height of it all i

self-harmed

the scars of which still on my wrist

until today

at 14 years old i was at the most

depressed

alone point in my life

i had nowhere to run no one to turn to

and this constantly growing feeling of

desperation

and there was this one phenomenon that

constantly kept

happening so when i was in middle school

every day when i returned from school

i would pass on this i would pass

this window that opened up to a ledge

on the side of my apartment building

very very high up

and for some reason i’ve always felt

very drawn to that window

one day a particularly uneventful

afternoon i returned home

and was tired enough of my life

to take off my school bags and climb out

of that window

and i just broke and i just walked

forward

but exactly half a step from plummeting

50 meters onto the pavement to my death

i decided to stop and look at the sky

it was a very very beautiful afternoon

the sky was this perfect pastel pink

that was

seeping into orange and purple and the

clouds were a wispy white that just

strung across the atmosphere and it

reminded me so much of the watercolor

paintings

that i used to make that i used to see

and the vocabulary with which i’m

describing this afternoon

in my head in english remind me so much

of the conversations that i used to have

with my parents

and all of this made me feel so

immensely

at peace so what did i do next

i just sat down

with my legs crossed over the ledge like

this

and i just stared at the sky as

the afternoon turned into evening

and that ladies and gentlemen that step

of sitting down

with my legs crossed over like this is

the single

most extraordinary step that i’ve taken

in my 20 years of life

thinking back i often credit

that beautiful afternoon the sky turning

those various colors

to be what eventually saved my life

but in reality i don’t think so

i believe that the child

that learned so much about arts that

learned so much about language

it internalized and became something so

important to her

it helped her survive to witness a

beautiful afternoon

despite all that she’s been through

and that compass that i mentioned to you

about

well

i genuinely believe that the compass

the moral compass was with me all along

one way or another but like i said it

was made up

of several components and at one point

as i went through all of my turmoil

the case did crack and water was

spilling out

i was very unsupported at that moment

but the thing is

the needle pointing north the needle

embedded with everything that was

good about me everything i made good

about me

was never broken filling the compass

back

up with enough water with enough support

was just a matter of time

but who is responsible for filling up

that water

a very cute analogy that i made while

writing this piece was that

according to the theory of elements or

my element is metal

and my mother’s element is water toy

so water supports needles right and that

is true

my parents were the first supportive

environment that i had

they lifted me up and allowed me to

point

at the right direction to point north

but the thing is there will come a time

in our lives where we will

be forced to move out of the point of

comfort

and away from our protective

environments

and we will feel drained we will feel

unsupported

and we will feel misdirection

but the most important thing i realized

in that afternoon on the ledge

was that it’s true i feel drained

and i feel alone but from that point

forward

what i do with my environments and what

environment i

choose to put myself in that is entirely

up to me

and there is no need to sacrifice

all about me no need to erase every

single achievement that i’ve done

in my life for the lack of environment

so ladies and gentlemen i want you to

take care of your moral compasses

i want you to be able to choose this

sort of environment that you put

yourself in

and make that decision innately you and

know that you always have a choice

but rest assured that every single thing

good about you embedded in the compass

needle

pointing north every single good value

every single thing intrinsically

yourself i truly believe it is never

broken thank you very much