The Future of the World Held in David Blaine's Lungs

David Blaine set the world record for breath-holding underwater at 17 minutes and four seconds. That’s right, 17 whole minutes, just a few minutes less than the duration of his TED Talk. No tricks, no magic, no illusions, no breathing contraptions, just him and his lungs. How?! Isn’t that impossible? Aren’t you considered dead by then? Blaine was only able to complete this seemingly impossible task by living and training by his belief that, “…I think magic…is pretty simple. It’s practice, it’s training and experimenting, while pushing through the pain to be the best that I can be”. Blaine illustrates an admirable trait very uncommon in today’s world. He shows that through hard work and dedication to a goal, one can literally accomplish anything. This is an extremely important trait that is lost on many who are part of my generation. Many teenagers often don’t care about their education, or much of anything really. They blow off tests, homework, and their teachers, and instead whine and complain about how hard their life is (even though it really isn’t) while playing video games on their couch. The upcoming generation could learn a very important lesson from Blaine that can insure a bright future—challenge yourself to be the best you can be and to reach your full potential. If this key trait is not instilled into young people now, we could be headed to a society where people don’t try. That’s it. Let me say it again. The vast majority of people will simply not try in life, in their job, in everything, if the idea of being the best you can be is not ingrained into the deepest folds of their potential-holding minds. In Daniel Pink’s book, Drive, he points out that there are three types of motivation that cause humans to do something. To paraphrase, there is incentive, or doing something for a reward, there is biological drive, in other words, the survival instinct, and there is one more source of motivation, where the joy of completing the task is the reward by itself. This is being lost in society. Imagine that—a human behavior being LOST, possibly forever. This will be my and my peers’ world in less than 20 years. Will we choose not to do something well if we are not rewarded for it, or if it is not necessary to our survival? Will we leave the blatantly obvious problems of the world to somebody else to fix, when there is nobody who will? What will our society look like to future historians? What will become of the world? The world – our world – could fail.

While recounting his crazy stunts, Blaine shares many highly personal experiences in a jovial manner, which endears him to the audience and engages them, so that his TED talk is not just about some guy who did something amazing at some point. It shows the audience that amazing things can come out of ordinary people. His use of personal pictures also adds credibility and helps to attract his audience’s attention even more. The combined use of recounting his personal experiences and displaying pictures helps to weave an amazing story about the benefits of dedication that is more than just a lesson, but a true application.