It was about time. It’s always about time.

TEDWomen’s theme this year was about time. It was about the essence of time. How and why it matters to every person regardless of age, race and status. How we perceive time, how we choose to spend it and ultimately what we want to and should be doing with our time. TEDWomen was presented in California, USA and transported through a global conversation to Nicosia via TEDxNicosiaWomen.

Ideas that stem from the subject of time have no limit. And that was evident from the TEDxNicosiaWomen talks we listened to last week. They all had the same foundation and yet various and brilliant ideas sprang up in different directions.

tedxnicosiawomenAndrea Solomonides’ story is about a person who once worshipped time and believed that her life revolved around a ticking sound until she was put in a horrible situation where she battled with grief and eventually forgot how to make time matter. ‘It’s time to make time matter…again’ she told us.

tedxnicosiawomenThat evening, Marina Katsari’s beautiful, crystal clear voice filled the room with words from fairy tales and stories. She spoke of kings, centaurs and sultans. But she wasn’t telling us just any story. She was telling us her own, sparking the idea worth spreading of how it’s about time we all tell our stories. However we like.

tedxnicosiawomenDr Andreas Stavroulis is a gynaecologist so that makes him a person who understands the importance of time for women. But what he chose to talk about at TEDxNicosiaWomen -and what makes his talk utterly inspiring- was the importance of women knowing what their choices are in spite of time.

tedxnicosiawomenLouiza Sophocleous began her talk with a picture of a shrimp. She dived into the scientific side of the shrimp’s existence and guided us through the realisation that our fascination with capturing images, therefore stopping time, has blocked our need to understand the science behind each and every subject we photograph everyday. We’re getting the signals but doing nothing about processing them.

tedxnicosiawomenThe sound of a heart beating rang through the room. Alexia Pissarides didn’t just talk about time, she performed to it. She opened the audience’s eyes to life through a dancer’s lens. With every pulse and movement we understood the need to succeed and challenge oneself because ’there is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is transmitted through you into action and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.’

So you see, on October 27 in Nicosia, different ideas did spring up, all different and brightly coloured, all thought-provoking and inspiring and all with one thing in common: It’s all about my time.

tedxnicosiawomen

Words by Eleni Antoniou

Photos by Michalis Loizides