I gave this talk at Facebook not so long ago to about 100 employees, and a couple hours later, there was a young woman who works there sitting outside my little desk, and she wanted to talk to me.
A friend came to see me last year -- and she doesn't mind me telling this story -- a friend came to see me last year and said, "Nigel, I've read your book.
So, not exactly what I was hoping for, but off I went -- up the stairs, down the hall, past the 'real' firefighters, who were pretty much done putting out the fire at this point, into the master bedroom to get a pair of shoes.
I don't need to get emotionally attached to these things because around the corner, there is always going to be another crazy, colorful, shiny outfit just waiting for me, if I put a little love in my heart and look.
And so I went back and I studied my first two acts, trying to see who I was then, who I really was, not who my parents or other people told me I was, or treated me like I was.
(Laughter) We're finding it's not necessarily the reality that shapes us, but the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality.
And to get out from underneath it -- to find our way back to each other, we have to understand how it affects us and how it affects the way we're parenting, the way we're working, the way we're looking at each other.
I've seen him lose his intellect, his sense of humor, his language skills, but I've also seen this: He loves me, he loves my sons, he loves my brother and my mom and his caregivers.
もちろん 家庭内で 困難もいくつかありました 弟たちが 私みたいだったらと 祈ったこともありました
Now, I cannot deny that there have been some challenging moments in my family, moments where I've wished that they were just like me.
So this is a project I'm working on, and this is a series of front covers to downgrade our super, hyper — (Laughter) (Applause) to downgrade our super, hyper-mobile phones into the essence of their function.
And those things are true, but they're only one half of the story, because the thing that we never say on camera, that I have never said on camera, is, "I am insecure."
But those guns were really a message for me, and even though he hadn't raised a hand to me, my life was already in grave danger every minute of every day.
The North Korean authorities intercepted some money that I sent to my family, and, as a punishment, my family was going to be forcibly removed to a desolate location in the countryside.
And so she kept those things in her desk, and years later, after she retired, I watched some of those same kids come through and say to her, "You know, Ms. Walker, you made a difference in my life.
If the shape of the fire is a person with two arms on both sides, as if she was yelling frantically, "Help! I'm on fire!" -- This symbol actually is originally from the shape of the flame, but I like to think that way. Whichever works for you.
You have no way of assuring that there will be another moment given to you, and yet, that's the most valuable thing that can ever be given to us, this moment, with all the opportunity that it contains.
I'm a man who's trying to live from his heart, and so just before I get going, I wanted to tell you as a South African that one of the men who has inspired me most passed away a few hours ago.
They all seemed to get a really big laugh out of that comment, but it wasn't until a few years later that I fully understood what they thought was so funny.
Being bullied as a kid created a sense of empathy in me toward the suffering of others, and it comes very unnaturally to me to treat people who are kind in any other way than how I would want to be treated.
Maybe, because employers are coming to me and saying, "We have already raised a generation of young workers who can't get through the day without an award."
I saw how she was longing to gain control over her simple daily routines, small details that we take for granted, from counting money at the market to helping her kids in homework.
The more we saturate our culture with public shaming, the more accepted it is, the more we will see behavior like cyberbullying, trolling, some forms of hacking and online harassment.
Now, we are currently testing this technology in test tubes or in Petri dishes, but the goal is to get this technology in the human body, apply it in the human body.
(Laughter) Now, on the surface, a lot of original people look confident, but behind the scenes, they feel the same fear and doubt that the rest of us do.
When I learned, some years ago, that writers were expected to have had really unhappy childhoods to be successful, I began to think about how I could invent horrible things my parents had done to me.
Should they come forward, that would be a tricky situation for us, but we're presumably acting in such a way that people feel morally compelled to continue our mission, not to screw it up.
So what this means, this incredible freedom of choice we have with respect to work, is that we have to make a decision, again and again and again, about whether we should or shouldn't be working.
I gave this talk at Facebook not so long ago to about 100 employees, and a couple hours later, there was a young woman who works there sitting outside my little desk, and she wanted to talk to me. 