Joyce Dias

Transcript

how many of you have been living a formular life doing what others do in order to be successful and how many of you have been doing exactly what you please regardless of the consequences and succeeding yes dare to March to the beat of A Different Drummer now many people think that I'm a non-conformist and I get often slammed for it but I prefer to think of myself as an alien from a different planet I mean you know there's a choice of everyone else is an alien or you are so if you choose to be the alien and um in fact without makeup I look almost

like nothing on Earth and I really am grateful to photographers for making me look Almost Human thank you so I was this little seven-year-old alien growing up in India and auditioning for the role of this beautiful blonde princess in a school play you have to know something about me I was really plain really awkward gawky skinny with these bright shiny eyes behind thick glasses but my uh Little Drummer girl said you're going to be perfect for that role so there I was this wistful little alien standing in this row of very pretty girls optimistically hoping I'll get selected I delivered my rehearsed lines perfectly and

then the teacher said you there you little girl with a spot on your nose you will be perfect for the role of the witch I burst into tears as everyone else burst into laughter and I raced home and I told my parents I'm never going back to that school again but my dad wouldn't hear of it and he said you're going right back and you're going to be the best little witch that school has ever seen and so I go back I fall into the role of the witch and in this in the school ground many of these my classmates tease me ugly ugly witch

skinny witch and instead of crying I now had new ammunition I had the lines rehearsed lines of the witch and I used to um turn everyone with this imaginary Rich wand into little frogs and tadpoles and then they hopped away came the day of the play and we had been rehearsing a lot and everything went perfectly according to plan when um I had to slide down this rope on my broomstick and as luck would have it the Rope snapped and I fell to the ground on my knees and my already wobbly front two two front teeth fell off in a gush of blood I wanted

to cry but my little drummer girls hollowed The Show Must Go On and I said hobbled picked myself up hobbled painfully to the front of the stage looking like a perfectly horrible mess and I delivered my lines perfectly as a result I got this special award from the teachers and the school principal and the next day when I walked into the classroom every pretty little girl had painted the spot on her nose to say I want to be just like you and the best part was I got the leading role in the school place for every year following that without an audition what makes you

imperfect makes you uniquely flossom are you listening to that drama it was a call of the drama that made me accept a position in France where I did not speak the language and instead of settling for you know a safe job in my own country that decision led me to uh to um a career that has taken a global Direction it was a call of the drama that made me leave my country of birth and come to Canada and instead of submitting to the typical arranged Indian marriage and that led me to my perfect soul mate and it is a call of the drummer that

makes me want to LEAP into the unknown embracing all of my imperfections and all of my mistakes to lead and Inspired Life you see what makes you weird makes you wonderful when you don't fit in you stand out and when your drama strikes that beat get up little alien and dance

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Transcript

hi everyone are you doing how many of you as a child dreamed about doing something that came true as an adult thank you my favorite author Richard Bach says you're never given a dream without the power to make it come true you may have to work for it however I was six years old when someone gave me a book on Greek mythology and I was totally fascinated by the stories of gods and goddesses and animals half animal half man men but it wasn't until one of my older sisters told me that Greece was not a fairytale land it was a real place and she showed

it to me on a map that this burning desire set in my heart to get to Greece somehow now I grew up in India at a time when traveling by air was a very expensive proposition and for a little girl to have a dream like that seemed like an impossible dream but I was determined to go to Greece and everyone teased me at schools you know when they ask children what do you want to do when you grow up I said I want to go to Greece the first thing I ever baked was a moussaka and I just wanted to learn Greek but the only

European language that was taught in school was french so I took French instead I figured it doesn't matter France is in Europe and I will get there somehow and anyway it's all Greek to me anyway so i went to france so i went on with my life reading it absorbing every single thing i could about grief and i went on to University and I decided okay I need to make a concerted effort to learn Greek but everywhere I looked I draw a blank but I heard there were German class is going on and I said well heck German begins with g the same it's closer

to greek so i'll take german now all of my fellow students at University just completely teased me mercilessly about it and I remember in particular a friend of mine James telling me if you ever get to Greece I'm King Solomon and you're the queen of sheba well as luck would have it I gained a scholarship to go to France and I said well it's not Greece but Frances closer to Greece and India was so I am off on my way and I took this scholarship and at the end of the year I discovered that there were bussed was going to breathe and I had saved

up really hard for it because I knew about it but when I raised to register for that tool I found all the seeds to Greece had been taken the only seat left was one seat on a bus to Italy and so I told myself well it will use closer to grace then Frances so I'm on my way and I voted that bus and i would call with crystal clarity till this day the night that we arrived at the vatican and i was so passionately praying to God get me off this bus and let me hop onto a ferry to go to Greece heaven take this

and not where I intend it to be and we clambered back in the darkness back into the bus or the students and I and I thought there was tears welling up my eyes with disappointments in what am i doing in Italy I want to go to Greece when suddenly in the darkness I heard this voice saying bully was a lei on Chris megami do you want to go to Greece my friends and I said oh my god oh my god god is a French man no it wasn't it was John Michell he was a bus driver and his girlfriend wasn't Greece and he said if

I show you everything there is to see Natalie in a week can be good for the rest of the trip to Greece I didn't I had the power to make my dream come true in fact I had devoted an entire bus or 40 people to the land of my dreams I had the most marvelous time in Greece I even got to speak German to some villagers on a mountaintop you know a relic of World War two they spoke German but the best part was sending this postcard to my friend James saying dear King Solomon I'm having the time of my life I wish you were

here yours truly the Queen of Sheba for one final thing before I leave a slight change in perspective booba says every journey has a secret destination that the traveler is not aware of you see the trench and the German that I learned well it catapulted my career in fact it gave me opportunity that I would never have dreamed of having and I worked in Europe for a few years and that path led me to Canada and to my French Canadian husband was sitting right there you see when you follow your dream with full passion with the persistence to overcome any kind of obstacles and you

keep going and you give it everything you've got when God in his universe will conspire to make your dream come true and more than that what you learn and who you become on the journey of pursuing your dreams will give you everything you want in life thank you

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