Imagination and Empathy: The Call of the Clown | Kato Buss | TEDxUCO

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey my name's KO I'm a professor of theater at the

University of Central Oklahoma and I want to be a clown but but not the kind of kind of clown you'd normally think of like a circus clown with big floppy red shoes and a flower that like squirts water out

and stuck in a VW bug with a bunch of other clowns I want to be a different kind of clown a special clown the kind of clown that we all have

inside us it's this inner clown here do me a favor um open your eyes really wide and put your fingers right where your jaw kind of hinges right there and just just rake down your

jaw a little bit relax that muscle open your eyes open your mouth and just just look at me and say

hey hey and I look at somebody else so look at somebody you're sitting by open your eyes open your mouth and say say hey

hey see we all have this clown inside us so I want to talk about like calling out that clown cuz when we call out that clown we

can access three really important things a first is uh imagination we're all born with the

ability to imagine with the power to make believe now think about it think about you're a little kid you're standing out in your backyard and you get like a bath towel from the linen closet you tie it around your neck but

it's not a towel anymore it's a cape and you're not a little kid anymore you're a superhero and you take off you [Music]

fly all around your backyard hard and you believe it you can fly I like my brother and I when stars

War Star Wars came out I mean the movie blew our minds we got all the action figures we would set up these huge huge elaborate

battles in the galaxy far far away we would play and we would just believe it like you the force

like for hours we just believed or my daughter when my daughter was three she had an imaginary friend raise your hand if you had an

imaginary friend my daughter had an imaginary friend they'd go everywhere together they'd play she'd go in her room and shut the door and I would Eaves

drop I would put my ear against my daughter's door and listen to her have these conversations and these play these gam and tell these secrets to her imaginary friend I would just stand

there with amazement because she believed her friend was real somewhere around 5 years old she

was getting ready to go to school and her friend went away why' she go away where' she

go she to the clown allows us to rekindle to reignite that power of

imagination second is empathy now I have a favorite Ted Talk and I thought what better place to credit and Proclaim my favorite Ted Talk

than add a TED Talk it makes sense as it does to me bernee Brown yeah she talks about among other things the

power of empathy it's beautiful like 22 million hits but she gives this really cool distinction of empathy between sympathy and empathy and it it looks something

like this all credit to BR so you're walking down the street and you're on your cell phone and you're checking your Pinterest or whatever it is re check and there's a big hole there

and in the hole is a deep dark cave and down the cave is a cavern and down the cavern is a person and all of a sudden you hear this voice and this person's like hey it's

me I'm down here and I'm in this this this Cavern help and the person with sympathy is walking by and stops and looks and

looks and goes o that is bad I feel bad for you I hope you're okay I uh I I got to

take this call good luck with that keeps on walking the person with empathy the person with empathy is walking down the street and they hear this voice from

down the hole down the cavern hey it's me I'm down here stuck in this this Cavern

help a person with empathy stops looks down says hey

hey I see you I know what it's like I've been there I'm coming

down and we'll figure this thing out together you see empathy the ability and more importantly

the willingness to look at people and understand to try and understand them their their their point of view their perspective their world

view in order to better understand them and ourselves so important and the clown a clown I mean that that that that's where he lives you have to have

that empathy third is vulnerability the clown asks us to be vulnerable

but it's not easy in fact it's difficult but let me clarify something vulnerability is not a

weakness vulnerability is not some kind of character flaw vulnerability is not something you save when you uh when you're all alone in your room and you pull the shades and lock the door and

you're just vulnerable when you're when when you're safe vulnerability is

strength vulnerability is courage vulnerability is the pathway to our most authentic

selves but so often we choose not to go there why don't we want to go there I believe we don't want to go there because we are

afraid we have a fear of failure a fear of failure but what I

know what I know is that the clown my clown your clown all of ours stands there with

this wonderful childlike imagination with empathy with vulnerability and looks at that

fear oh opens its eyes and its mouth and just steps in present in the [Music]

moment imagine imagine if we lived like that not just at school not just in our

office not just at home but imagine if we lived our lives like that I'm a

professor I have a PhD I'm supposed to be smart a master of my discipline and my craft and all that's good but what I want to

be what I want to be is a clown I want to be the kind of person who lets my imagination run wild I want to be the kind of person who

looks at my friends and my and my students and my family with empathy I want to be the kind of person who is not afraid to be vulnerable in

spite of my fear of failure in spite of my fear of embarrassment I feel let let those three things lead

me imagination empathy and vulnerability lead me through my life then I can become a clown open your eyes really

wide open your mouth smile a little bit and look at me say hey

hey my name's KO thanks for letting me talk [Applause] [Music]

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