In life, we find ourselves at one point or the other saying things to ourselves when things do not go as we planned to reassure us. Yet while we do so, do we start subconsciously believing other factors other than your own efforts are the cause of your failures, and in the process distort the facts. For Isaac Lidsky, this very trail of thought shaped the reality he believed in, until a genetic disorder left him blinded and made him begin to rethink how he viewed his reality. The conclusion he came up with was seeing is not believing, and the reality we see is created by our efforts, structured to best suit this particular kind of speech to give us the solution needed.

His impressive track record utilizes ethos to establish himself as credible, and I find it to be used also as a way to connect to his topic. A former child actor, a graduate of Harvard in mathematics and computer science, and later in law from the same school, he previously served as a law clerk for two different Supreme Court justices. However, he also is the first and only individual to serve as a law clerk being blind. This surprise, as he explains, is from the stigma and prejudices concerning ‘disabilities’, although his literal blindness is only part of his argument. His ethos thus becomes a major part of his topic by establishing himself as being able to succeed in spite of his blindness, and how losing his literal vision was what allowed him to find figurative vision.

Pathos is found, although rather than appeal to emotion outright, it touches on feelings the audience have certainly felt before in their lives. Fear becomes a factor of emotions that impacts the reality we perceive, as he explains.  Emotions are one of the components to how the mind constructs what we see. They make up the pathos, appealing to the emotions and fear people have certainly felt once in their lives, whether in school or in jobs. However, more critically, excessive fear changes how we view reality and causes a distortion that hinders the reality around us as more difficult or impossible than it is supposed to be. His fear when he lost his eyesight almost made him give in, had he not learned to see the world with vision, not with sight.

Vision is the metaphoric view of the world that is different from our literal sight.We think of reality as the world we reside in, but for Lidsky, reality is perceived differently by ever individual. And by believing in the reality we see, often one accepts that reality as the universal truth of the matter. This problem limits human beings by allowing us to excuse all factors except any caused by ourselves and preventing growth as an individual by falling into a sense of complacency. The backwards swimming fish at the beginning are a metaphor of this false perception of reality we create, and the dangers it creates, but Lidsky however tells one can learn to see and avoid these dangers by changing the reality we see to be influenced by the actions one takes.

Ultimately, this TED Talk was solutions based argument, meant to invoke the audience to be faced with a problem impacting their lives and then know what needs to be done in order to resolve it. This is made the most clear near the end, where he begins to connect back to the ‘backwards swimming fish’ he established in his hook to the reality humans perceive and believe in. For example, I often find myself blaming the lack of time in the day to do the things I wanted over what I needed to have done, when it was more accurately because I did not focus on my task at hand to my fullest. My antagonist is time and I a bystander. However, Lidsky clearly is addressing this very way of thinking, and how we just do not do anything about our situation but feel pity if left so. We are then given the solution to own up to what is our faults and work to improve, as awareness is one step toward solving the problem.

One may argue the speech was not as effective as it could have been in set-up at the beginning, but I find the strength of the argument is the idea we are in more control of the circumstances we live in than we believe ourselves to be. Despite backgrounds of any viewer being different from his own, the important element that allowed Lidsky to find vision was conquering the fear of the unknown after going blind, and ultimately, I find that is the universal idea any person will often face in life. Even though the construction of the argument was slow, I find the pacing better allowed the explanation of why the dangers of self-excuses are to what we perceive, allowing bias and no accountability for a person's actions.

The excuses we make to ourselves in life facing roadblocks or problems should not allow one to be complacent and stagnant. A reality people should be creating for themselves is one where they actively solve their problems with their own abilities, regardless of the unknown. The following is the message Lidsky hopes to convey to his audience, from his own experience after losing his sight almost making him give into a reality where he would be without independence, and ultimately deciding to move forward and not let his disability define his reality. Being able to see with vision and not with just our sight needs to be done more often, lest we fall into not understanding the nuances around us. The reality we create is based on how we believe it, so now one must shape what we see how we wish for it to be, and then understand how to reach that vision.