Living Passionately

"Isabel Allende: How to live passionately—no matter your age" TED Talk

Famed novelist Isabelle Allende recounts and teaches how one can live passionately throughout his or her life. In order to rid yourself of all the worries and doubts plaguing and hindering your well-being, just learn to let go of things and embrace life with a “yes” type of attitude. Whether it may be drama, comedy, tragedy, love, death, or losses, saying yes to anything that comes your way will definitely promote vigor and passion in what might otherwise turn into a dull, dragged out life. She mentions a number of aging individuals who have encountered hardship and/or started new passion projects later in life. They all became happy and confident in whatever venture or decision they made, including independence and an acceptance of a lack thereof.

Allende uses a great deal of pathos in her oration as a method of easing the tension in the room and inviting the audience to celebrate and sympathize with certain people she brings up. She offers the empowering anecdote of the woman who, at the early age of 60, started working in Nepal to save young girls from domestic bondage. Within 30 years she saved over 10000. Audiences would feel admiration and inspiration from someone to achieve such a feat at such a restricting age. Ethos is a sub level factored in due to the speaker’s fame and respectability; she didn't have to mention other well-known names to win the audience’s trust. The writer uses some logos with her presenting some statistics of girls saved by a woman in her later years. Throughout the speech, her reasoning was sound and applicable because all one needs to do is take her advice to heart and believe and assume the mentality she was encouraging. Allende failed to go in much detail about how she learned to let go and live passionately aside from saying so and throwing in a couple bullet points. However, she succeeded in captivating and entertaining the audience with sprinkled laughs and endearing anecdotes.

I picked this talk because I was already familiar with one of the author’s novels, La Ciudad de las Bestias, which I happened to read in my Spanish 4 class. Needless to say, I loved the adventure book and gained much respect for the author, too. When I saw her name on the first page of the TED results, I immediately chose her. I wasn't disappointed and quickly learned a skill that I can actually apply to my life – living passionately.

“A film without a single trace of pity or love”

Double Indemnity is a movie filled to the brim with drama, betrayal, and flashbacks. However, it is almost completely lacking in the area of love. Both of the main characters strayed from the star-crossed lovers that audiences were used to seeing decades before. Instead, they manipulated each for their own personal gain. The femme fatale lead was cunningly deceptive and used her looks to get a seemingly innocent insurance salesman to kill her wealthy husband. The salesman quickly hopped on board the murder train (pardon the irony) and wanted to get his own share of the money by exploiting the very insurance company he worked for in order to attain the largest payout possible. Both were using each other under the façade of love but weren’t aware of the other’s plan until the very end.

Phyllis Dietrichson at first appeared to be a trophy wife to a wealthy older man. As the story progressed, it was revealed and strongly implied that she killed the previous wife while she was her attending nurse. This gold-digger was always in it for the money, and once the supplies ran out, she moved on. As Walter eloquently put it, “she was a tramp from a long line of tramps.”  Taking advantage of her sexual appeal, she managed to convince an interested salesman into doing the dirty work. To maintain his motivation, she acted as if she had madly fallen for him, and she constantly threw out phrases like, “I love you, Walter”, “Now we can finally be together”. In the end, Phyllis never loved Walter, nor even pitied him. Otherwise, she wouldn't have exploited him so harshly. Walter Neff could be seen as an unfortunate man who got involved with the wrong person at the wrong time. However, under closer inspection, it becomes apparent that Walter was infatuated with the large sum of money he could end up with if he carried out Phyllis‘s request. He also wanted the girl but not nearly as much as the money. He knew he could get away with the crime since he worked for the firm that was being exploited. Being hidden in plain sight, he would know every obstacle to avoid and every fine detail to make the most of. 

The only character that truly felt compassion was Lola. She loved Nino and for once Walter could tell. The movie shows her loving nature when she and Walter spend time with each other and the latter notes, “it was only with her that I could relax and let go a little." This confession of being at ease coincides with the caretaker archetype, proving Lola is capable of love.