Neil deGrasse Tysons Speech Will Leave You SPEECHLESS One of the Most Eye Opening Speeches Ever
the gym instructor pointed to my father
online
and said cyril tyson everyone look at
him
he does not have the body type that
would excel
in track and they used him as an example
and he says
what no one is going to tell me what i
can’t do in my life
and he used that as a reason to
start running and he started track
in that moment he decided that his one
of his next
tasks in life would be to take up
running
and excel at it within a few years of
that he became world class
at one time had the fifth fastest time
in the world
in 1948 the olympics was not yet ready
to come back
to us because we’re still reeling
roiling from
the second world war instead there was
still an olympics
it was called the gi olympics and it was
held
in hitler’s stadium so he competed
alongside jewish
athletes so there they are competing
against
the new york athletic club and his best
friend johnny johnson
okay was coming around the back stretch
might have been the quarter mile coming
on the final straightaway
and a runner from the new york athletic
club is a few paces behind him
and johnny johnson overhears that
runner’s coach
say catch that
and he overheard this and so what did he
say to himself
he said this is one he ain’t gonna catch
and that extended his his his lead
to the finish line at the end of the day
what matters is for who and what you
become in life
for me at least was what level of wisdom
did he glean in his life and then
successfully communicate to me either by
example
or by just explicit statement and
that combination of those two means of
delivery
had some important uh impacts
we live in a very fractured world today
i don’t know if it’s the most fractured
ever
but what is clear is that the internet
has enabled in social media have enabled
people to
tribalize you might go your whole life
without ever finding another
person who thinks the earth is flat you
go online
and you see them all so you have ways
to say why you are different from other
people
and i don’t know that that’s always a
healthy
place to be you can draw a line in the
sand between people
who transgress but
do not hold power over you from those
who transgress
and do so the coach who said catch that
he doesn’t have power over johnny
johnson unless you allow him to
there’s a famous quote from martin
luther king
you can only be ridden if your back is
bent
i apportioned my emotional reactions to
where it actually mattered for my life’s
trajectory
when i grew up it was very common to
hear the phrase
sticks and stones can break my bones but
words will never hurt me
this was an inoculation against
hate speech really against just evil
people
just nasty people you able to develop a
system of defenses against unpleasant
people
out there and i haven’t heard that
phrase in a long time
i don’t hear it recited in the
elementary schools
what i think has happened over the years
is we came to learn
as a civilization that words can be
hurtful
and words can sort of
change your mood or set you into a
depression
what i see on the flip side of that coin
however is people are less
able to deal with the very same people
who were around today who were around
back then
who are calling you names the people who
might be bullying you on the internet
by saying things about you we i don’t
know that we have
how to defend against that now other
than seeing a counselor
for your emotional state i can say from
the era in which i grew up
i don’t give a rat’s ass what you say to
me okay um
unless you are between me and some goal
then i have i’ll
have to navigate that some way so now
what do i need to do
because you’re in my way do i dig under
you go around you
leap over you you got to navigate it i
think
high school that’s where you learn how
to deal with difficult people
there’s not a single high school movie
that doesn’t show the angst of the
cliques that have formed
and what the relationships are that they
have to one another it’s this microcosm
of
real stuff that goes on in the real
world there are beautiful people and
they will get jobs you’re not gonna get
okay there are people who are nasty
you’re gonna have to navigate them there
are people who
you cannot interact with for whatever
reason or another
they’re gonna be in the cubicle next to
you in your workplace
so i think we undervalue the total
social pot
that people are tossed into in their
high school experience
for me what i do for the public is
prime almost 80 plus percent of it
is driven by duty
not by ambition because i
can do something
and if i can do it better than others
and it’s for a greater good in society i
would be irresponsible
if i did not that many people look for
meaning
in life and i’m thinking to myself
you have more power than that you have
the power
to create meaning in your life
rather than passively look for it
so for me i create the meaning
and meaning to me is do i know more
about the world today than i did
yesterday
that enhances meaning for me and if that
accumulates
and accrues daily in a month you you
know
way more than you did than just that day
later so that you continue to grow
no one ever told me that i had to search
for meaning in life
to begin with so that was never even a
part of me
my first question of me wasn’t where do
i find meaning it was how do i create
meaning and that started early
early teens school they view you as this
empty vessel that they pour
information in and you test it over here
you get a high grade you’re praised
you might even give the commencement
speech
is that who become the shakers and
movers of the world
i i can tell you this if we’re if
einstein were here and we’re talking
with einstein
we can talk them for hours and hours and
hours you know what question will never
come out of our mouths
is what college did you go to i want to
go to that same college
i bet most of your people have sat in
this chair it’s not about what college
they went to
it’s about their own initiative their
own drive their own ambitions
their own curiosity that is not
taught in school sadly
school should as a minimum preserve that
curiosity
for you it yeah if you lost some of it
because
it’s not going to be in all of us put it
back in
so that when you graduate school you can
give literal meaning to the word
commencement
commencement means beginning it doesn’t
mean ending
and so you leave school and you say to
yourself i now
know how to learn i now have a curiosity
of all things i have yet to be exposed
to
and i will now become a lifelong learner
i’m a scientist um raised
catholic but started drifting
when i was like in third grade none of
it was making much sense to me
there were no decisions made in the
house that referenced the bible or god
or jesus or anything
so in that sense decision making was
secular and rationally informed
and i thank my parents for that i valued
that as someone
being raised by them because it meant if
something didn’t make sense they’d
do it because i said so well that’s not
a rational reply to your child
they would have the reason for it and we
discuss the reasons so
early on as i became more visible i’d
get letters and people would ask
about god and i don’t know much about
god
you know so i my early letters were well
sciences
religion is that and i can’t help you
any further then i thought to myself
that’s not fair to the person who wrote
the question
they’re coming from a place some
religious tradition whatever that
tradition is
and i if i’m receiving that letter
there’s a contract an implicit contract
between
me and the person who’s seeking my
guidance
my wisdom my insights
and i owe it to that person to know as
much as possible
as i can about where they’re coming from
i read things that take me to places
where other people think if i’m
an educator i want to know that because
when you’re speaking to me
and i have some understanding of you i i
can
navigate we talk about navigation
earlier i can navigate
your receptors for learning
i want to i want to teach you how to
think about the world
and then you say i have a new way to
understand the world and just run off
don’t
you don’t even look back because a new
level of hunger has descended upon you
and
methods and tools to feed that hunger
are now accessible to you
so my impact would be that others are
impacted
and they don’t even remember that i had
something to do with it
on my tombstone i want the epitaph
be ashamed to die until you have scored
some victory for humanity
you want the world to be any of us i
think should want the world to be a
little better off for you having lived
in it
that doesn’t mean people praising you
that that’s no
not even about that so what do you have
to give
with no expectation of return
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