Theme 78: Preserve

We all have a responsibility to tell the truth about who we are as a nation. When we do that, we begin to relate to one another better, we see our humanity in each other.

Purposeful collective action can change our nation and the world.

We have a social responsibility to preserve these places to never forget who we are.

Culture is not something you can put away on a shelf or try to freeze in time. It's about having a muscle memory, practicing it, and bringing it back into the world. Something you keep alive so that you're able to pass it on to the next generation.

In choosing food [...] it's really about recovering tradition, it's about changing painful narratives of loss and erasure into something that can be healing and restorative.

Worry less about authenticity and more about, 'Is this food good? Where is it going to take us next?'

You have to be okay with looking at tradition in the eye and sometimes bending it to where you are and when you are.

Is there a way that our foods can actually be part of this healing?

The stories that we hear or the stories that others tell about us can have the power to harm us or have the power to heal us.

Culture isn't static. Culture changes. We all knows this, but the question is, 'Who also gets to decide what is tradition or not?'

There are things that we love, but don't always love us back. What do you do with that?

You can pick one strand of a food and find an entire history embedded into it.

[Ask yourself,] 'What are the sides of my identity that I've been hiding from or don't want to look at?'

What we eat and how we eat reflects our individual histories and also something wider and collective.

This was the first time I had ever seen Filipino food or Filipino anything in print.

Wherever we went, our kitchen reflected our changes, with a mixture of flavors from here and there.

Can you recover the things that you were supposed to forget?

There were only people from all over the world, just telling me to keep going and doing it.

I have this ridiculous faith in myself that it'll probably be okay. I will figure it out later.

You need privacy. You need space to create. You need space to innovate and think great thoughts.

We have a sense of helplessness around how we think about privacy in today's world.

When we talk about privacy in today's society, it's your eye that is looking. It's your eye that is doing the invasion of privacy.

Sometimes art is created to force us to sit with awkwardness.

You need privacy. You need space to create. You need space to innovate and think great thoughts.

Privacy is a preserve. It is a space in which we need to protect certain human values and truths that we know are very important.

Art engages thought.

Increasingly, our privacy are being held behind glass walls.

It's really hard to get people to understand why privacy law matters to them and get energized about it.

"Art is much more nimble and responsive to the issues that we see in society. In fact, it is an early warning system for some of the challenges we will see."

"Art has awful manners."

"Mary Beard, a really famous historian - she's phenomenal - just wrote a book about how we see. [She] talks about art, not being about the person who made it, but what others made of it. And that's what I really like about art. It forces us to decode what we are seeing. It forces us to go through some mental gymnastics."

I love to think that we're all these cultural beneficiaries, agents, and eventual ancestors regardless of whether we ever have children. We are born into a world, we try to pick up on the ways we're socialized and interact with people, hopefully, we interrogate what we value and where that comes from and how it manifests...and eventually, we'll each play an individual role in collectively passing down a world. That is a sacred trust.

"(By this point,) I had enough rejections to wallpaper my entire apartment."

...and every day I carry with me that thing that I came to understand, that now flows in my veins, and that is that nothing endures, nothing does. And maybe nothing should endure. But how much we put into it, how much heart we put into it, that is the measure of our lives. There may be, in fact, no other measure of our lives."

The work that we do today will be the artifacts of tomorrow.

Craft a story that is easily relatable from person to person.

It’s important to try and push yourself to go on a journey and dig a little bit deeper.

Expression and stories [are] vital if we want to preserve human connections.

In an increasingly digital world, how can we preserve the things that make us human to begin with?

Nothing endures. Nothing does. But how much we put into [our creative work], how much heart — that is the measure of our lives.

Befriend one reader that will close the last page and feel that their life was illuminated in some way.

You don't have to write something perfect. You don't have to write something timeless. You have to write something that befriends one reader.

Sound is life.

I had never, in all of my life, known a silence that profound.

Antes tenías unas zapatillas, y ahora tienes 12 pares, y no concibes tener sólo un par…

Photograph things that are important to you.

Ask yourself: am I preserving my life or am I creating a life preserve?

You can choose to put yourself in boiling pot moments and then sometimes life throws you into the boiling pot.

There's no growth in happily ever after.

We need these challenging moments as they are essential to our growth.

Here's the thing: If we're not clear on who we are, our values, and if we're giving too much of ourselves, or giving a digested version of ourselves — we will never have enough of ourselves to create a life preserve.

When you're living a life that is different to the life you're portraying on social media, it causes a disconnect within yourself and that does not bring joy. It brings anxiety.

Making yourself digestible happens a lot on social media. People presenting a version of themselves that they think that others will like more or those who share so much of themselves that they have no intimacy left in their life.

You can either sit there and wallow about the person who you used to be or you can choose to rebuild yourself into a better person.

There comes a day when the fog lifts and you can start to rebuild yourself into a better person.

Motherhood has given me some of the greatest life lessons.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to be 'just a mom.'

What was holding me back? I was trying wanting to make myself easily digestible.

Your values should be at the basis of every decision you make.

Your values are your guiding light. They are more than just big words painted on your office building wall. It's the way in which you operate on a day to day basis.

Once all your work, status, and relationship — who are you?

You are the main ingredient. All of you. You need to understand who you are and what you value.

I want my children to create a life preserve not preserve their life. And I want them to see me doing the same.

My hope for today isn't to inspire you, it's to challenge you.

We decide what goes into the mix and what doesn’t. We are the jam makers.

Your brain responds to what you tell it and the pictures you give it, and if you are telling it disempowering stories and giving it great pictures to go along with that, you’re going to get really poor results.

Check the stories that are going on in your head.

Lean into your emotions.

Listen into the distance as if you are looking into the horizon.

Listen. Listen deeply. Listen to each other. Listen to your neighbors.

Music is an inspiring and loving teacher. It has the power to unite the wisdom of the past with the promise of the future.

What preservation taught me about music, is that music is an oral mirror. A human reflection. By preserving it and sharing it, we are reflecting and being reflected by the people who came before us.

There has never been a time so necessary for us to listen to the voices of our ancestors, to resonate with them. And by going with them, we can be better.

If I don't preserve myself how can I preserve others.

Self-worth is how do we feel about ourselves, feelings result in thoughts and thoughts result in actions.

I have to preserve my self-worth from fluctuating.

We can preserve things by growing them, and we can preserve things by protecting them.

For me, there was just this spark inside me and it became so crystal clear that saving endangered species is all about people; it’s about community-based education and nobody was doing it. I knew this was my truth.

We no longer escape to nature. Maybe re reinvent it and see it where it is which is everywhere we are. And we are part of the system.

Adaptation is not about ‘me’ – it’s about ‘we’.

If you are not in control of your brand or your decision-making, someone else will be. There will be times where you have to choose.

Especially in a situation of uncertainty, it’s better to float and enjoy it than to take off swimming with no direction and end up exhausting yourself.

Floating does not mean that you’re sitting by the riverbank but it does mean that you’re committed to finding home within yourself. Then, take off swimming towards a goal.

Make sure that you’re preserving your essence and you’re preserving what’s unique about you. Because we all have something authentic to give to the world.