It's TED Talks Daily. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. When you stop for a moment and you're

really still, what do you long for? What kind of joy does your heart seek so much that it

kind of hurts? Susan Kane, a quiet revolutionary, is the voice behind today's talk from Ted Summit in 2019.

In it, she pushes us to follow our longing because it contains so much power.

Cultural scripts may tell us to always be upbeat, but Susan argues why the opposite,

by listening to our broken hearts, can be meaningful.

She's accompanied by Min Kim on Violin.

When I was in my early 30s, I was an associate at a Wall Street law firm, and I had been working

16-hour days for seven years straight. And even though, ever since I was four years old,

I'd had this beautiful and impossible dream of becoming a writer,

I was also pretty ambitious and on the verge of making partner.

Or so I thought.

Because one day a senior partner named Steve Shailen knocked on my office door.

Steve was tall and distinguished and very decent,

and he sat down and he reached for the squishy stress ball on my desk,

and he said that I wasn't going to be making partner after all.

And I remember very badly wishing that I had a stress ball too, but Steve Shailen was using mine. And I remember very badly wishing that I had a stress ball too, but Steve Shalen was using mine.

And I remember feeling sorry that it had fallen to Steve to be the one to tell me this news,

because he really was a good guy.

And I remember bursting into tears right in front of him, such a non-partnerish thing to do.

But that very afternoon,

I up and left my law firm for good. And a few weeks after that ended a seven-year relationship that had always felt wrong. And so now I was in my early 30s, and suddenly I had no career,

...