Passion Lives Here, Isabel Allende

Of the many things to take away from this video, I would take away the knowledge of passion and empowerment of women. Isabel Allende really opened my eyes about how passion is really key to a person's heart and life. She taught me this by sharing stories, both happy and sad about women filled with passionate hearts and how in using that passion they exceed their situation.

If a person were to define heart and passion, what would be the explanation? Are there different definitions? As Ms. Allende explains passion and heart go hand in hand, they interconnect, but one can't fully understand her meaning unless there is a definition that goes along with them as well. She said that passion also goes along with women (I don't know if that's more than men, but that might be implied) and that 80% of displaced people and refugees are women and children; why is that? This can be interpreted in two ways, one: that the women help the children survive because of their heart and passion while the men die, and two: there is something wrong with the environment that they live in; it might even be a combination of both.

Once passion is defined, the next question is, how do people get it? Are they just born with passion already inside of them, just waiting to come out, or does the person have to go through some sort of traumatic experience or series of experiences to achieve passion in their hearts? If a person does have to go through a traumatic experience to get passion in their hearts, does that also mean that passion can be a negative thing? What makes people think that passion is always a good thing? Does it always help their will to live?

Even though Ms. Allende's TED talk brought up a lot of questions, I found that the thing to take away from the passionate speech on passion, was the beautifully phrased storytelling that went along with it. She told stories that had sadness to them and weight heavily on my heart, but they helped to define her point, to make her statement. This relates to Story in A Whole New Mind , and how using stories to help with a point can really get it across; if education was like that, we would have a whole lot of big thinkers in our society as a nation, and as a world.