Shadowing Practice: Life is easy. Why do we make it so hard? | Jon Jandai | TEDxDoiSuthep - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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Transcriber: Jelena Vukovic Reviewer: Ivana Korom There is one phrase that I have always wanted to say to everyone in my life.

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Transcriber: Jelena Vukovic Reviewer: Ivana Korom There is one phrase that I have always wanted to say to everyone in my life.

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That phrase is "Life is easy." It's so easy and fun.

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I never thought like that before.

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When I was in Bangkok, I felt like life is very hard, very complicated.

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I was born in a poor village on the Northeastern of Thailand And when I was a kid, everything was fun and easy, but when the TV came, many people came to the village, they said, "You are poor, you need to chase success in your life.

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You need to go to Bangkok to pursue success in your life." So I felt bad, I felt poor.

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So I needed to go to Bangkok.

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When I went to Bangkok, it was not very fun.

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You need to learn, study a lot and work very hard, and then you can get success.

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I worked very hard, eight hours per day at least, but all I could eat was just a bowl of noodles per meal, or some Tama dish of fried rice or something like that.

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And where I stayed was very bad, a small room where a lot of people slept.

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It was very hot.

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I started to question a lot.

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When I work hard, why is my life so hard?

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It must be something wrong, because I produce a lot of things, but I cannot get enough.

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And I tried to learn, I tried to study.

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I tried to study in the university.

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It's very hard to learn in university, because it's very boring.

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(Laughter) And when I looked at subjects in the university, in every faculty, most of them had destructive knowledge.

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There's no productive knowledge in university for me.

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If you learn to be an architect or engineer, that means you ruin more.

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The more these people work, the mountain will be destroyed more.

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And a good land in Chao Praya Basin will be covered with concrete more and more.

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We destroy more.

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If we go to agriculture faculty or something like that, that means we learn how to poison, to poison the land, the water, and learn to destroy everything.

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I feel like everything we do is so complicated, so hard.

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We just make everything hard.

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Life was so hard and I felt disappointed.

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I started to think about, why did I have to be in Bangkok?

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I thought about when I was a kid, nobody worked eight hours per day, everybody worked two hours, two months a year, planting rice one month and harvesting the rice another month.

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The rest is free time, ten months of free time.

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That's why people have so many festivals in Thailand, every month they have festival.

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(Laughter) Because they have so much free time.

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And then in the daytime, everyone even takes a nap.

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Even now in Laos, go to Laos if you can, people take a nap after lunch.

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And after they wake up, they just gossip, how's your son-in-law, how's your wife, daughter-in-law.

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People have a lot of time, but because they have a lot of time, they have time to be with themselves.

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And when they have time to be with themselves, they have time to understand themselves.

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When they understand themselves, they can see what they want in their life.

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So, many people see that they want happiness, they want love, they want to enjoy their life.

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So, people see a lot of beauty in their life, so they express that beauty in many ways.

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Some people by carving the handle of their knife, very beautiful, they weave the baskets very nicely.

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But, now, nobody does that.

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Nobody can do something like that.

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People use plastic everywhere.

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So, I feel like it's something wrong in there, I cannot live this way I'm living.

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So, I decided to quit University, and went back home.

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When I went back home, I started to live like I remember, like when I was a kid.

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I started to work two months a year.

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I got four tons of rice.

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And the whole family, six people, we eat less than half a ton per year.

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So we can sell some rice.

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I took two ponds, two fish ponds.

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We have fish to eat all year round.

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And I started a small garden.

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Less than half an acre.

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And I spend 15 minutes per day to take care of the garden.

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I have more than 30 varieties of vegetables in the garden.

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So, six people cannot eat all of it.

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We have a surplus to sell in the market.

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We can make some income, too.

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So, I feel like, it's easy, why did I have to be in Bangkok for seven years, working hard and then not have enough to eat, but here, only two months a year and 15 minutes per day I can feed six people.

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That's easy. And before I thought that stupid people like me who never got a good grade at school, cannot have a house.

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Because people who are cleverer than me, who are number one in the class every year, they get a good job, but they need to work more than 30 years to have a house.

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But me, who cannot finish university, how could I have a house?

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Hopeless for people who have low education, like me.

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But, then I started to do earthly building, it's so easy.

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I spend two hours per day, from 5 o'clock in the morning, until 7 o'clock in the morning, two hours per day.

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And in three months, I got a house.

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And another friend who's the most clever in the class, he spent three months to build his house, too.

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But, he had to be in debt. He had to pay for his debt for 30 years.

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So, compared to him, I have 29 years and 10 months of free time.

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(Laughter) So, I feel that life is so easy.

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I never thought I could build a house as easy as that.

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And I keep building a house every year, at least one house every year.

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Now, I have no money, but I have many houses.

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(Laughter) My problem is in which house I will sleep tonight.

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(Laughter) So, a house is not a problem, anybody can build a house.

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The kids, 13 years old, at the school, they make bricks together, they make a house.

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After one month, they have a library.

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The kids can make a house, a very old nun can build a hut for herself.

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Many people can build a house.

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So, it's easy.

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If you don't believe me, try it.

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If somebody wants to have a house.

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And then, the next thing is clothing.

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I felt like I'm poor, like I'm not handsome.

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I tried to dress like somebody else, like a movie star.

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To make myself look good, look better.

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I spent one month to save money to buy a pair of jeans.

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When I wore them, I turned left, I turned right, looked in the mirror.

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Every time I look, I am the same person.

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The most expensive pants cannot change my life.

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I felt like I'm so crazy, why did I have to buy them?

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Spend one month to have a pair of pants.

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It doesn't change me.

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I started to think more about that.

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Why do we need to follow fashion?

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Because, when we follow fashion, we never catch up with it, because we follow it.

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So, don't follow it, just stay here.

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(Laughter) Use what you have.

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So, after that, until now, 20 years, I have never bought any clothes.

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All the clothes I have are leftovers from people.

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When people come to visit me, and when they leave, they leave a lot of clothes there.

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So, I have tons of clothes now.

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(Laughter) And when people see me wear very old clothes, they give me more clothes.

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(Laughter) So, my problem is, I need to give clothes to people very often.

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(Laughter) So, it's so easy.

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And when I stopped buying clothes, I felt like, it's not only clothes, it's about something else in my life, What I learned is that when I buy something, and I think about, I buy it because I like it, or I buy it because I need it.

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So, if I buy it because I like it, that means I'm wrong.

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So, I feel more free when I think like this.

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And the last thing is, when I get sick, what will I do?

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I really worried in the beginning, because then I had no money.

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But, I started to contemplate more.

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Normally, sickness is a normal thing, it's not a bad thing.

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Sickness is something to remind us that we did something wrong in our lives, that's why we got sick.

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So, when I get sick, I need to stop and come back to myself.

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And think about it, what I did was wrong.

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So, I learned how to use water to heal myself, how to use earth to heal myself, I learned how to use basic knowledge to heal myself.

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So, now that I rely on myself in these four things, I feel like life is very easy, I feel something like freedom, I feel free.

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I feel like I don't worry about anything much, I have less fear, I can do whatever I want in my life.

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Before, I had a lot of fear, I could not do anything.

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But, now I feel very free, like I'm a unique person on this Earth, nobody like me, I don't need to make myself like anybody else.

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I'm the number one.

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So, things like this make it easy, very light.

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And, after that, I started to think about that when I was in Bangkok, I felt very dark in my life.

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I started to think that many people maybe thought like me at the time.

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So, we started a place called "Pun Pun" in Chiang Mai.

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The main aim is just saving seed.

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To collect seed, because seed is food, food is life.

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If there is no seed, no life.

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No seed, no freedom.

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No seed, no happiness.

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Because your life depends on somebody else.

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Because you have no food.

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So, it's very important to save seed.

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That's why we focus on saving seed.

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That's the main thing in Pun Pun.

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And the second thing is it is the learning center.

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We want to have a center for ourselves to learn, learn how to make life easy.

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Because we were taught to make life complicated and hard all the time.

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How can we make it easy? It's easy, but we don't know how to make it easy anymore.

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Because we always make it complicated and now, we start to learn, and learn to be together.

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Because, we were taught to disconnect ourselves from everything else, to be independent, so we can rely on the money only.

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We don't need to rely on each other.

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But now, to be happy, we need to come back, to connect to ourselves again, to connect to other people, to connect our mind and body together again.

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So, we can be happy. Life is easy.

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And from beginning until now, what I learned is the four basic needs: food, house, clothes and medicine must be cheap and easy for everybody, that's the civilization.

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But, if you make these four things hard and very hard for many people to get, that's uncivilized.

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So, now when we look at everywhere around us, everything is so hard to get.

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I feel like now is the most uncivilized era of humans on this Earth.

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We have so many people who finish university, have so many universities on the Earth, have so many clever people on this Earth.

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But, life is harder and harder.

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We make it hard for whom?

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We work hard for whom right now?

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I feel like it's wrong, it's not normal.

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So, I just want to come back to normal.

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To be a normal person, to be equal to animals.

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The birds make a nest in one or two days.

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The rats dig a hole in one night.

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But, the clever humans like us spend 30 years to have a house, and many people can't believe that they can have a house in this life.

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So, that's wrong.

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Why do we destroy our spirit, why do we destroy our ability that much?

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So, I feel that it's enough for me, to live in the normal way, in the abnormal way.

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So, now I try to be normal.

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But, people look at me as the abnormal one.

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(Laughter) A crazy person.

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But, I don't care, because it's not my fault.

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It's their fault, they think like that.

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So, my life is easy and light now.

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That's enough for me.

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People can think whatever they want.

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I cannot manage anything outside myself.

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What I can do is change my mind, manage my mind.

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Now, my mind is light and easy, that's enough.

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If anybody wants to have a choice, you can have a choice.

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The choice to be easy or to be hard, it depends on you.

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Thank you. (Applause)

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Shadowing Practice: Life is easy. Why do we make it so hard? | Jon Jandai | TEDxDoiSuthep - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

About This Lesson: "Life is Easy" with Jon Jandai

Key Vocabulary & Phrases

Chasing & Pursuing Success

Education & Knowledge

Rural Life & Community

Practice Tips for This Video

What is the Shadowing Technique?

How to Practice Effectively on ShadowingEnglish