My extraordinary steps
[Applause]
hi
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
us
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