Maya Shankar Promo Clip
Clip: Season 5 Episode 4 | 41sVideo has Closed Captions
Losing the violin taught Maya Shankar to view her identity as more malleable.
Maya Shankar says the greatest lesson she learned from losing the ability to play the violin was embracing the flexibility of her identity. This, she says, aided her in rethinking her life and discovering that the violin was only one way she could fulfill her passion for human connection.
Maya Shankar Promo Clip
Clip: Season 5 Episode 4 | 41sVideo has Closed Captions
Maya Shankar says the greatest lesson she learned from losing the ability to play the violin was embracing the flexibility of her identity. This, she says, aided her in rethinking her life and discovering that the violin was only one way she could fulfill her passion for human connection.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship- The one big lesson that I learned from losing the violin was that I needed to see my identity as more malleable almost as a survival strategy.
You strip away the superficial features of the instrument itself and you figure out what still remains, what is there that ignites me.
And ultimately, I realized it was human connection.
I realized that as a kid, I loved the idea of being able to go on a stage and have this intimate emotional experience with people in the audience that I'd never met before through my music.
And those people in turn can move you based on their response, right?
It's a conversation.
And that's why I became a cognitive scientist.
