Pipe Dream sat down with Jonathan Caputo, a Binghamton University junior triple-majoring in psychology, philosophy and Italian and this year’s student speaker at TEDxBinghamtonUniversity. In his speech, Caputo critiques the saying “love yourself first” and challenges society to rethink how we love. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Pipe Dream: Can you tell me a little about yourself and what your talk is about?
Jonathan Caputo: I am [a] triple-major in psychology, philosophy and Italian, so psychology and philosophy have a lot to do with my talk because I like talking about concepts in general. That’s why I was very motivated to do the TED talk. My topic is on the phrase ‘love yourself first’ and how most people are pretty on board with that notion — when you hear that, people are like, ‘Yeah, “love yourself first.”’ I think it does more harm than good, and I think that hopefully my talk serves as a perspective change for people and they think about everything and what the saying actually means when people say it.
PD: How are you feeling about doing your first TEDx talk?
JC: I’m excited! I wasn’t nervous until Thursday, and then Thursday until yesterday I was pretty nervous, but I’m not feeling very nervous right now. I’m pretty excited, but we’ll see what happens when I get on the stage.
PD: How did you get involved with TEDx?
JC: One of the directors is someone who lives in my building, and is also one of my friends, so she was very vocal about making sure everyone knew about it and applying. I’ve always been interested in TED talks.
PD: How did the idea for your TEDx talk come about?
JC: It came from a conversation that I had with my friend, which I talk about a little bit at the beginning of the talk, and we were just talking and I didn’t agree with her and it just hit me, this is probably what my talk is going to be about.
PD: What should we do as an alternative to loving ourselves first?
JC: We should accept other people’s love regardless of our current state. So instead of waiting for you to feel okay, for you to feel perfect and everything’s good, we should just accept the love instead of pushing it away because that’s just essentially what the saying says to do. It says, ‘Wait until you love yourself, until you experience that,’ but I’m saying you don’t need to wait.
PD: How does your talk fit in with this year’s theme of ‘Ignite?’
JC: I just wanted it to be a perspective changer, just wanted to spark something in everyone’s brains, say ‘Okay, maybe this saying isn’t actually so helpful as we think it is.’ We can resculpt the way we are thinking about our interactions with people.