How to be good enough in America (w/ Wajahat Ali)

How to Be a Better Human

TED and PRX

Self-improvement, Education

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2024

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If there's one thing this show believes in, it's that finding joy and comedy in life is essential when being human gets tough. Wajahat Ali is a writer who knows this well. His charming and powerful stories bring to light the funny -- and difficult truth-- of life outside of the mainstream. Chris hears from Wajahat about his experiences as a brown Muslim in America and as a father whose young daughter had a complicated health diagnosis. Wajahat's heartwarming wisdom on the importance of letting go (and celebrating the good with the bad, even in the bleakest times) will have you reassessing everything -- from your worst self-destructive tendencies to what you value most.

For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts

Wajahat's latest book, "Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American" is out now.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Ted Audio Collective.
0:02.0	Audio Collective.
0:04.0	You're listening to how to be a better human.
0:10.0	You're listening to how to be a better human.
0:12.0	I'm your host Chris Duffy.
0:13.4	If there's one thing that I really deeply believe and that I feel like has been
0:17.4	confirmed over and over in conversations for this show, it's that almost nothing
0:21.6	about ourselves is fixed.
0:23.0	We can build new muscles and we can grow and evolve and change in just about every way imaginable.
0:28.0	For me personally, though, one of the hardest skills to build or to maintain is hope and optimism.
0:36.0	I can often get crushed by the weight of the suffering in the world.
0:40.0	And it's hard for me when I'm looking at the news to see hope or optimism as a skill that I can really work to build and to grow and to feel more of.
0:51.0	Which is why I am really excited to be talking to today's guest. more of
0:55.0	which is why I am really excited to be talking to today's guest, Wajat Ali,
0:56.0	because first of all, he's hilarious, and that's always one of the fastest routes to my heart.
1:00.0	So I'm very excited to deduct him for that reason, but also because he makes such a strong, clear-eyed argument for how we can cultivate and preserve hope, even in the face of everything that is going on in the world. Here's a clip from his TED Talk. I'm not a foolish, wide-eyed
1:16.7	naive optimist. I'm a pragmatist. Fully aware of the many challenges and horrors we are facing. But through my own personal
1:24.0	experience if it is all helpful, I can assure you that walking through this forest
1:28.6	of horrors going on this journey wherever it may lead, if you choose to invest in hope, it at least
1:35.8	makes the ride a bit sweeter and easier.
1:40.5	And as the wise Ram tells Poe in Kung Kuplu Panda 2,
1:45.0	your story may not have such a happy beginning,
	...

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