Full text of environmentalist John Francis’s talk: The Power of Walking and Silence at TEDxTokyo conference.
Listen to the MP3 Audio here:
TRANSCRIPT:
John Francis – Environmentalist and Planetwalker
[Music]
Well, I begin with music, because music is… playing music is one of those activities, a human activity and it’s also an art form that uses sound in silence.
It’s also a theory that music is, well a kind of part of communication that delivers something important about the speaker and the speech.
So we’ll see if that’s true.
But what I’d like to share with you this afternoon is an experience of walking and silence.
When I was a young man, I really wanted to be a monk, maybe not the spirituality part of it, but the physicality of it. I mean I went to a monastery, and I really liked the robes.
I mean, I really liked the robes. But when I learned that the monks didn’t speak, I said, oh wait, wait a minute, oh no, that’s not for me. And so that dream that I had of being a monk just kind of withered by the wayside.
Now it was kind of a shock to me that 20 years later I found myself walking across the United States and having taken a vow of silence. So that was a big shock.
And now this is me back in those days in 1973, and kind of not monk robes but planetwalker robes. They did just as well.
Now I had actually given up riding in motorized vehicles after seeing an oil spill in San Francisco Bay. I wanted to take some responsibility for that. And at the same time, I argued with my friends and my neighbors about what one person could do… could one person make a difference?
I argued so much that I decided that on my 27th birthday, maybe I should just shut up… as a gift for my community.
They were really happy, because I talked a lot.
But I started learning things after I shut up. And I said, well, maybe I should do this another day, and another day. And I learned some more, so I should do it another day.
Well, 17 years later, after I had walked across the United States, earned three university degrees, including a PhD in environmental studies, I decided to start speaking again.
And the reason I wanted to speak again is because I had a message, was that… the message was that people were part of the environment and if people were part of the environment, then how we treated each other was really how we treated the environment.
Hmm… well, when I did stop speaking, I did learn some things. The first thing that I learned was that I hadn’t been listening.
What I used to do was I would listen just enough to think that I knew what someone was going to say and then I would stop listening to them and be thinking about what I was going to say back to show them how smart I was. That I knew better, that I knew more, I could say it better.
[read more]
Well that really ended communication.
Now building on that idea that it takes two to have communication, I realized something else that it takes two to have an argument.
And now listening, I was able to hear things that I ordinarily wouldn’t hear… things that I might have disagreed with before, so this was really a great thing for me. That’s good stuff.
But when I told people this story after I had started speaking, they said Well, John, that’s really great. But how did you communicate if you didn’t talk?
And we heard a little bit about sign language tonight, but I’m going to just do a little demonstration about going to a restaurant, if I went to a restaurant and I had to order breakfast.
Now usually I would ask you to be the waiter but I’m going to be the waiter and I’m going to be myself. So I’m kind of like talking to myself or not talking to myself.
But just to give you an idea how this all works, so yes what would you like to have for breakfast?
Um, two pull-ups what? 2 eggs oh that’s great. Very clever.
And what about… Oh how would you like those cooked?
Blinking eyes, sunny-side up, oh okay that’s good, very good. Maybe you would like to have them over easy, hmm? And to drink, what would you… what would you like to drink something to dip? Tea, Oh, tea that’s very good; tea, very good, tea.
And so that’s how it went and if everything went well, I would have had eggs over-easy and a nice cup of tea. Now remember that cup of tea because that comes in a little later.
Well, not speaking it was almost a given that I was going to listen, and I say almost because not speaking only is an opportunity for us to listen.
Now I didn’t have to… I didn’t have to listen, and many times I found myself getting in my own way about things that I didn’t really want to hear. So I just kind of would tune that out, those judgments that we make, the judgments that we make to keep from hearing things that sometimes people are saying to us.
But listening to things and hearing things that we don’t normally hear, well that’s really a good thing because it’s really how we learn.
And so I had this way of trying to get beyond that. We’re drinking a cup of tea… you and I are having a cup of tea and I take that cup of tea that I’m drinking, and I put all my prejudices, all my fears, my biases in that cup of tea, it’s all of who I am and I just put that a little bit outside of my reach. So that’s me, and I can have a sip of that… oh it tastes pretty good, anytime I want to.
But right now I want to hear what you have to say, so I’m going to just listen to you. Now maybe you want to tell me something new. You want to tell me something different, you might even want to tell me that what your tea tastes like, and that’s a good thing, because then afterwards I’m going to taste my tea and it might taste a little different now.
It might taste a little better. But I don’t have to worry about me losing my cup of tea.
Well, actually walking, I think, is really what I did before I stopped talking, and walking is this kind of activity that allows you to be here, allows you to be in a place where you are. I know that we’re all here but because of the modern day technology, we sometimes project ourselves from where we are right now in this organic moment and space and time to someplace that could be because of the technology, oh say hundreds or thousands of miles away from this moment in time.
But the walking allowed me to be in that place, and in order to find silence.
Some neuroscientists recently studied walking and they came up with the idea that walking can work on the brain so that we can calmly accept things that happen right in our environment, and not overreact. It also allows us to grow brain cells. This is all incredible.
Now I’m not a neuroscientist and I’m definitely not a monk, but walking really let me discover bamboo. And in discovering bamboo, I could paint it, I could sit with it, I could be with it. And over time it allowed me to find the silence because it took root inside of me.
Now back in the first century, a Greek philosopher named Apollonius of Tyana, he had went on a walk… a silent walk for five years and it was rumored that he could quell riots with just the nod of his head and a glance. That sounded like my mom.
But after walking and not speaking for 17 years, I have to say I couldn’t do that.
But what does this mean to us? I mean, what is this all walking and about not speaking? I believe that walking and consciously not speaking and listening even on a crowded city street or a quiet country road for a few minutes, for a few moments, can help us see and discover silence.
And by silence, I don’t mean the absence of words. I mean the space that makes the music and in silence we not only can discover ourselves but each other. And perhaps that peace which we are all a part of.
