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Good evening.
Thank you for the beautiful words.
Finally another Lorenzo in this place.
After 500 years.
We needed it. Generational turnover.
We're alway taking about turnover.
I was told one shouldn't talk about oneself at TED.
Rightfully so.
I am a TED fan and I thank you for your invitation,
because I really am a fan.
I discovered TED when nobody in Italy knew about it.
I used to show it to my friends.
Often at night
I 'd sit on the couch with my laptop on my lap,
watching talks, because,
on top of practicing my English,
I'd also practice energy, vision.
We'll take a tour on a rollercoaster.
18 minutes for a song are endless,
but if we talk about life it's a really short time.
Considering that I know that as a TED tradition
you shouldn't talk about yourself,
I will start with a picture of me as a child.
That's me.
I'll begin with the wishes
I had in the seventies.
I was about 10 years old, here
and this was my biggest wish;
this is a Saltafoss, a cross bike,
that I never succeed in receiving as a gift.
But that gap between me and the Saltafoss,
that gap between me and the Saltafoss,
is still the biggest source
of energy and optimism, in some way.
Because there is always a cross bike
that I picture waiting for me at the end of some kind of adventure.
Today, I will tell you about a technique
to strenghten that resistence line
which I was talking to you about,
because otpimism, if it really exists,
it's not simply about letting ourselves go,
but it's often about struggling against things,
it's a type of struggle,
it's a sort of commitment
because there are as many reasons to give up in front of optimism
as there are
to be optimist.
So, I would simply erase
the word optimism
and I would welcome another word that I like better,
and it's a synonym, in my opinion, of optimism,
it's vitality.
I'm interested in vitality of stuff,
I'm interested in the life the lies within things,
and the promise of life that things hold.
In that sense, this promise of life
is never, hardly ever, clear at first glance,
so, the first thing have to do
is to find it.
I have been using this technique
since I started wishing for that bike,
and I call it looking for the "Bruce Lee Effect".
This is Bruce Lee.
Bruce Lee is an action movie hero
from when we were kids.
He was a genius
of Kung Fu and martial arts.
What's a Bruce Lee Effect?
The Bruce Lee Effect is what you get
when you go to the movies,
when, in Cortona, we used to go to the "Signorelli",
where they showed Bruce Lee movies.
And in Rome there was parish cinema as well,
where I used to watch Bruce Lee movies.
The Bruce Lee Effect is the one you get
after watching this kind of sequence.
I downloaded it from Youtube last night.
Pay attention.
Ok.
Renzi [Mayor of Florence], did you that?
I recommend you Bruce Lee movies.
I can lend you some DVDs.
That is the Bruce Lee effect.
And watching that kind of movie,
when your're 7 or 8, you come out of the thater
and you start kicking your friends,
you feel really strong,
you get home, and mum tells you,
"Wash your ears!" and you go:
"To me? Are you telling me I should wash my ears?, to Bruce Lee?"
And the Bruce Lee Effect doens't fade away,
it lasts for days.
And it's that feeling that makes you feel somedoby,
allowing you to walk lighter through your existence,
giving you that boost,
and you even kick the streetlamps
without breaking them, or your friends.
And this is exactly the Bruce Lee Effect.
Then life changes, now I'm not charging myself
watching Bruce Lee movies;
even if sometimes I like to watch them again.
Why am I telling you about the Bruce Lee Effect?
Because I believe otpimism, vitality
need to be constantly nourished.
It's not a lifetime
unchanging feature.
For instance,
going back a decade before Bruce Lee,
I'll look into my field: music.
1958, Italy is being reconstructed, moving towards the Sixties;
these crucial years in which things
can either take a turn or another.
Italy could have become
a Communist country,
or it could have become anything else.
These were crucial years. With history, you never know.
I wasn't born in those years.
And then comes a song.
Music: "I think such a dream will never come back,
I painted my hands and my face blue.
Then suddenly I was ravished by the wind"
Look at him.
"and I started flying in the infinite sky.
Flying.
Oh, oh.
Singing."
When this song came out I wasn't born,
but my dad was
and our parents were.
And I often think about him, in his car,
he had bought a car with his first salary
a small utility car
and he had a radio.
The power of that song, in those years.
The power of a country starting over from the beginning
and in need of the Bruce Lee effect to start again.
it needed a man who could break the rules,
up on a stage,
opening up his arms
saying just one word:
"Flying."
This is what I mean by the Bruce Lee Effect
Let's move forward,
to the reasons to feed this vitality:
research, science, scientific progress.
This is the CERN particle accelerator in Geneva.
The one of Gelmini Tunnel.
This is the entrance of the Gelmini Tunnel.
It's wonderful, even from an aesthetic point of view.
Thank you.