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Transcript

Many Lifetimes in One Life · Just Julia

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SPEAKER_00: Many lifetimes in one life.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: Lately, I've been thinking about how many lifetimes can fit inside one life.
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SPEAKER_00: When I look back, I don't see one version of myself.
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SPEAKER_00: I see many.
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SPEAKER_00: There was a little girl growing up in a small town in Brazil,
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SPEAKER_00: convinced the world was only as big as the streets she knew.
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SPEAKER_00: Then there was the exchange student who boarded a plane for the very first time
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SPEAKER_00: and discovered that the world was infinitely bigger than she had imagined.
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SPEAKER_00: The university student in New Zealand,
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SPEAKER_00: working part-time while learning how to build a future she couldn't yet see.
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SPEAKER_00: The young woman who packed her bags again and moved to Italy to study.
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SPEAKER_00: The intern who walked through the doors of the United Nations in New York,
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SPEAKER_00: wondering whether someone had made a mistake by choosing her.
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SPEAKER_00: The professional, The wife.
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SPEAKER_00: The mother.
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SPEAKER_00: Every version of me believed she had finally arrived.
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SPEAKER_00: Until life quietly whispered, there's another version of you waiting.
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SPEAKER_00: For a long time, I thought life was about finding myself.
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SPEAKER_00: Now I think it's been about meeting myself.
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SPEAKER_00: Again and again and again.
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SPEAKER_00: Not because I planned those transformations.
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SPEAKER_00: Because every few years, life placed a small, unfamiliar door in front of me.
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SPEAKER_00: And instead of waiting until I felt completely ready, I walked through it.
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SPEAKER_00: Not with certainty, with curiosity.
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SPEAKER_00: When I was 17,
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SPEAKER_00: I couldn't possibly have imagined
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SPEAKER_00: that one exchange program would become New Zealand.
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SPEAKER_00: That New Zealand would become university.
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SPEAKER_00: That university would become Italy.
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SPEAKER_00: That Italy would become love.
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SPEAKER_00: That love would become family.
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SPEAKER_00: That one unfamiliar decision would quietly rewrite the geography of my entire life.
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SPEAKER_00: None of it was visible from where I stood.
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SPEAKER_00: The only thing I could see was the next step.
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SPEAKER_00: I've never had the map.
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SPEAKER_00: Looking back, I don't think I ever needed it.
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SPEAKER_00: Every life I've loved began with something surprisingly ordinary.
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SPEAKER_00: One conversation.
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SPEAKER_00: One application.
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SPEAKER_00: One suitcase.
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SPEAKER_00: One plane ticket.
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SPEAKER_00: One unfamiliar step that only years later revealed itself as the beginning of another lifetime.
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SPEAKER_00: Looking back, it all feels beautifully connected.
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SPEAKER_00: Living it, it felt like walking through fog.
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SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's what faith has always looked like,
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SPEAKER_00: not seeing the whole road, just believing the next step deserves to be taken.
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SPEAKER_00: I've stood here before, not in the same city, not at the same age, but in this exact feeling.
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SPEAKER_00: The feeling of standing between a life that no longer fits and another
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SPEAKER_00: that hasn't introduced itself yet.
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SPEAKER_00: I know this place.
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SPEAKER_00: It has met me before.
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SPEAKER_00: Before New Zealand.
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SPEAKER_00: Before Italy.
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SPEAKER_00: Before New York.
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SPEAKER_00: Before becoming a wife.
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SPEAKER_00: Before becoming a mother.
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SPEAKER_00: Every lifetime I've lived has quietly begun here.
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SPEAKER_00: In the uncomfortable space where one chapter has already ended and
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SPEAKER_00: the next one hasn't yet found the words to introduce itself.
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SPEAKER_00: If I'm completely honest, this isn't the chapter I thought I'd be living.
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SPEAKER_00: Some parts of my life have asked me to let go before I was ready.
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SPEAKER_00: Others haven't introduced themselves yet.
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SPEAKER_00: For a while, I thought that feeling meant something had gone wrong.
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SPEAKER_00: Now I wonder if it simply means another lifetime is beginning.
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SPEAKER_00: Because every version of myself that I cherish today was once someone I couldn't
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SPEAKER_00: yet imagine becoming.
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SPEAKER_00: Maybe we spend too much of our lives asking ourselves, who am I?
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SPEAKER_00: Lately, I've been asking a different question.
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SPEAKER_00: Who am I becoming?
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SPEAKER_00: Because if life has taught me anything, it's this.
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SPEAKER_00: The biggest transformations are rarely loud.
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SPEAKER_00: They usually begin on an ordinary day,
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SPEAKER_00: disguised as a conversation,
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SPEAKER_00: an application,
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SPEAKER_00: a suitcase, a plane ticket, a decision that doesn't make complete sense yet.
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SPEAKER_00: Most of the extraordinary moments in my life never felt extraordinary while I was living them.
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SPEAKER_00: They felt uncertain, uncomfortable, sometimes even impossible.
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SPEAKER_00: Only years later did I realise they had quietly become the moments that changed everything.
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SPEAKER_00: So I don't need all the answers anymore.
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SPEAKER_00: I only need enough courage to take the next unfamiliar step.
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SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's all I've ever needed.
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SPEAKER_00: Maybe we only get one life.
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SPEAKER_00: But if we're willing, we get to live many of them.
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SPEAKER_00: If you've read this far, let me leave you with one thought.
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SPEAKER_00: Maybe the question isn't how many years we get to live.
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SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's how many lifetimes do we still have the courage to live inside this one?
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SPEAKER_00: As for me, I have a feeling another lifetime is already beginning.
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SPEAKER_00: I just haven't met her yet.
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SPEAKER_00: And somehow that fills me with more excitement than fear.
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SPEAKER_00: Just Julia.