This is it. My final TedxTalk Tuesdays post. This summer has been incredible, and I’m really going to miss my weekly dose of Tedx inspiration. With that said, I’m leaving you all with my favorite TedxTalk post of all time. One that is actually not a TedxTalk at all, but rather a talk that was given at the Fourth Estate Summit.
On Saturday morning, intern Maryam Elarbi took the stage in what was nothing short of an inspiration overload. After a funny, turned serious, turned inspiring intro video, the young 20-year-old activist (and Invisible Children communications intern) took the stage to share her story. In five minutes she had the crowd laughing and crying as she reminisced the day she first decided to wear hijab, meeting Tom Shadyac at the first Fourth Estate Summit, and her regret over not meeting Gary Haugen (international human rights lawyer and founder of IJM), for fear that she wasn’t important enough to introduce herself to such a giant. She encouraged members of the audience to introduce themselves to the people who inspired them as a courtesy to the person on the stage.
“If there’s somebody here, on this stage who inspires you, pull them aside and tell them. Because you are just as important as every person on this stage, and do it as a courtesy to them to let them know that they’ve inspired you, because they deserve to know.”
Perhaps the most memorable line the budding activist delivered was this:
“Always follow your gut, especially if something scares you…”
She followed that by recounting the story of a blog post she wrote about her dream of attending law school and how Gary Haugen was responsible for her commitment in the pursuit of international human rights law. She described almost deleting the entire post because she didn’t think it was good enough, and shared that had she not written the post, and had she not shared her dream, she wouldn’t be on that stage preparing to clue in the audience on the most important moment of her life. Elarbi went meta by quoting herself on stage, drawing laughter from the audience before dropping a major surprise.
To find out what happened next, watch the link above. The picture below should clue you in on what ensued…
P.S. This blog post, and the entire TedxTalk Tuesday summer blog series, was written by the inspiring budding activist future lawyer new public speaker Maryam Elarbi. Oh hi!
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