A Story About Knots and Surgeons

First of all, this was a fantastic TED talk and I highly recommend it! It was interesting and insightful at the same time and was overall very captivating.

This talk is mainly about the contrast between the predictability we try to implement in our lives and the unforeseeable futures we all have. The speaker Ed Gavagan asserts that we try to live our lives in predictable ways but we actually have very little control over the chance that dictates our lives. One little decision can change someone's life in an instant. It goes along very well with the theme of storytelling because it shows the intersection of two different stories and what they reveal about human nature. This main idea is very interesting to explore in connection to storytelling because the different facets and elements of storytelling can reflect or shift moments to reveal their significance. Although the TED talk is not about storytelling itself, it focuses on two different stories themselves. The talk is centered around these two stories, revealing how meaning can be drawn from their intersection and why storytelling in general is important to reveal the significance of interactions, whether they be planned or stumbled upon by chance. This connects to Never Let Me Go in that there is meaning or significance always lying below the surface, it is just a matter of what each story reveals. With Kathy H. as the narrator, we have to ask why she chooses what she does to reveal and how this is significant.

In the TED talk, the first story that Gavagan told was about a time when he was on the subway in New York City and witnessed two medical school students practicing tying knots. Each of them took turns creating the knots with their left and right hands. Then, a professor, who happened to be teaching the lecture they were going to, started to help them. The professor really emphasized the significance of being able to tie the knots quickly and being able to do so while not even being able to see your hands. This would be the difference between life and death during surgery. This reminded Gavagan of a time that he was walking a street in New York City at night and was attacked by three gang members that were tasked with killing a stranger as a part of their initiation. Gavagan had chosen to walk on one side of the street and not the other, and it had completely changed the course of his life. He was stabbed many times and lost so much blood that by the time he had gotten to the hospital, he had a 2% chance of living. He had managed to fight off one of the guys and run to the other end of the road, before collapsing, which is how he had been able to get someone's attention to call 911. These two stories bring up another one of Gavagan's arguments which is that no one thinks that they will be the one that is affected by such minor decisions such as choosing which side of the street to walk on. He disproves this through sharing his second story, showing the power and influence of storytelling. The final point that he really conveys through this talk is how luck and chaos both work in combination to form the unpredictable future.

Multiple components factor into how Gavagan constructs his arguments, the most obvious of which is pathos. The entire talk is an emotional roller coaster, full of highs and lows that are quite moving. The clearest of this is his discussion of being attacked and the impact that it had on him. From the  pain to the recovery process, including emotional strain, PTSD, and learning to continue living, it was an extremely sentimental and personal experience that he was sharing, and the audience could sense that. The room was silent before erupting into applause at the end, touched by his emotional story. By the end, Gavagan himself was fighting back tears and barely getting out his last words, showing how much of an impact this had on him. This was clearly an effective technique because of its ability to engage with the audience. It had such a great impact because the idea under the surface is frightening: that this entire event was caused by one small seemingly insignificant choice. This thinking connects with the idea that we can't truly control our own lives, and anything can come of an insignificant choice if chance aligns. This shows the falsity behind a notion that most people hold true, which is that they won't be the one whose life is changed based on a small decision. Any single choice has the power to shape your life, a scary implication for most. Should we worry about what we put on our toast for breakfast, in fear that it might change the course of our life? What about what time to get your haircut? It is all about luck and chaos, and how they coincide. This connects to storytelling because everything that happens to us, when told, is conveyed in a story. Stories shape how we view events like these, and the pathos integrated in Gavagan's story lets us to start asking these questions.

Ethos is also important to consider in this TED talk because it impacts how we perceive the story. Ed Gavagan is the owner of the company PraxisNYC which is a design firm. It mainly works to design homes that not only incorporate beauty but also sustainability. But the main reasons that he has so much credibility in his story is his notability as a storyteller and the fact that he is speaking from personal experience. First, he is an accomplished storyteller that shared his story with thousands of people before speaking at the TED talk. It is interesting because he did not originally begin as any sort of storyteller; he just got the courage one day to talk in a storytelling competition, which he won. From there, his abilities were recognized and flourished. Second, since he is speaking from personal experience, he is immediately much more credible. Some small choice instantly impacted him and changed the course of his life, showing how this actually happened to someone. He is not making inferences or guessing about the power of choice, he experienced it in the most brutal way. This is interesting to relate to storytelling because we have to wonder if the most meaningful stories are ones that come from personal experience. Can fiction stories or inferences be just as powerful? When they involve luck and chaos, are they as credible? A lot can be drawn from Gavagan's talk on this front and it goes to show how meaningful storytelling really is.

The logos in this TED talk mainly concerns with the balance of quality and quantity of evidence. When describing the stories, Gavagan really goes into detail on certain parts and doesn't describe everything possible about the situations. This is also a clear to Never Let Me Go, where we can clearly see the significance of Kathy H. being the narrator of the story and having a huge impact on our perception of other characters and what happens in the novel. From what Gavagan focuses on, we draw significance. All of his recollections of the stories or evidence are concise with a clear emphasis on quality. The description of the knots, the doctors marveling over his progress, the recovery process. Each individual story within a story is carefully laid out to reveal the significance behind a seemingly insignificant choice. The structure of the TED talk plays into this idea because it is purely centered around the two stories. They are the talk, yet they reveal so much more. These are the focus of the talk, the message. This shows how meaning not only comes from the content but also the storytelling. One possible weakness of the logic of the talk is that the foundation is personal experience. Although this is generally a great thing, especially for pathos and ethos, memory is an interesting concept. Each person's memory is different and therefore the conclusions drawn from it are different. Therefore, we are only getting one side of a story and it would be interesting to see how this choice affected the lives of others involved: the doctor, the person who called 911, the gang members.

I originally picked this TED talk because its title was interesting to me and I wanted to see where the discussion of knots and surgeons would learn, nonetheless how it would connect to storytelling. It relates to me because it makes me think of every single minor decision I make and how it will affect me, not only in the short term but in the long term too. Will I come across an incident where some small choice that I make changes the course of my life? It is almost daunting to think about because there is no pattern to it, no predictability, like the routines we are so used to. This related to Never Let Me Go in multiple ways but I found one of the most outstanding of which to be that they both explore the possibility of changing your fate. Is your destiny, how your life is going to play out, already decided? Do we have the power to change anything about what happens in our future or are the decisions we are going to make already set? This connects with what we learned about in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde too with the dichotomy between the rational and supernatural. It is interesting to trace this back to storytelling to examine how individuals spin the concept of destiny or the role of decision making. Overall, this TED talk clearly got me thinking about a lot of questions, most of which I can't even begin to answer. But I found this TED talk really enjoyable and the questions that I keep asking myself because of it are really interesting to ponder in relation to my own life.

Work Cited:

"Ed Gavagan." TEDMED, TEDMED, LLC., www.tedmed.com/speakers/show?id=6620

Gavagan, Ed. “Transcript of ‘A Story about Knots and Surgeons.’” TED, TED, 2012, www.ted.com/talks/ed_gavagan_a_story_about_knots_and_surgeons/transcript#t-74614.

Freebie :))

Thank you :)!