 Thank you for having me Before I began I tell all my audiences that I answer all my mail. I Write four to six hundred personal letters a month, and I've done it for about 40 years, and I'm caught up Even though I'm on the road 300 days a year I've never used a computer or had an iPhone. I'm actually not attracted to them. They're machines I'm attracted to people and so Ironically, I'll tell you to get my address on our website patch Adams org I've not been to our website because I don't know how to get to one but my address is there in Illinois and I Again for example I just spent two weeks in Russia in a week in Chechnya And so I got home for nine hours and flew here and in that time I got all the mail that accumulated and I answered most all of it on my flight here So if you need a friend if you have dreams no one will listen to or you want ideas. That's me So write me you can also hate what I'm saying and curse me, which is also fun I'm going to give you my history, which I think is a history Following the qualities that I've heard about This wonderful organization and what you're being presented today. I'm 68 years old I grew up in a military family the u.s. Loves killing people all over the world and I grew up mostly outside the u.s. On military bases my father died for more when I was 16 and so in 1961 I moved back to the u.s. And I grew up a skinny nerd dweeb dork sissy boy to give you an idea of what my background is and I've kind of stayed there and In 1961 we moved to the u.s. To the south Which I really didn't know much about because I grew up outside the u.s. And I was put in an all-white school and I had the allergic reaction of my life I realized my country was fake religion was fake and the adult world was an embarrassment and that people were actually denied Poilets drinking fountains restaurants and hotels because of the color of their skin and I I Really lost my mind. I couldn't believe these things and I wept and wept and wept I went to school and was put in an all-white school And I was beaten up almost every day my last two years in high school because I couldn't be silent. It's a problem and three times in one year 17 and 18 I Was hospitalized because I was trying to kill myself. I didn't want to live in a world of violence and injustice Everything you love about me came from my mom and she Never did an act of injustice or unkindness or inconsiderateness in her life and And Between the second and third hospitalization. I was present at Martin Luther King's I have a dream speech with a million people Saying let's have something different. I still needed one more hospitalization. Maybe threes Set or something but in that third hospitalization lightning struck and said you don't kill yourself you dummy you make revolution What a word revolution Yes, but what revolution so I decided what we needed was a revolution of love and I made two decisions that have shaped my life ever since then now for 50 years The first in a country that medicine isn't a health care system. It's a vulgar greedy business. I Decided that I would be a free physician and I've been a free physician for 43 years never made any money in the practice of medicine That was an easy decision. The other decision was much more personal How can I be an instrument for peace and justice and care in every second of my life and? so I decided that I would be Disgustingly revoltingly happy all of the time the rest of my life and I have been uninterruptedly happy for 50 years It was when I realized that my mother gave me the greatest gift I think a parent can give their children and that is she gave me self-esteem, which means I can do it So as soon as I decided I didn't have to develop into a person that did it I just had to decide on which performance to give in a given moment for those decisions a way to say it poetically is When I left that hospital, I dove into the ocean of gratitude and never found the shore I live and stay afloat in the sweet gratitude of this precious thing called life and a way to say that I Chose to be happy all of the time is very quick that I realized it was actually six qualities I had decided happy funny loving Cooperative creative and thoughtful that I was going to be that as a person all the time I am a nerd my library is about 40,000 books and there's no John Grisham and So I'm a reader for example, I know four hours of poetry by heart I I love great literature and have done a huge amount of life in that and I Have done a lot of thinking about the mind and I know this conference is about the mind I have my own theories. I think Evolution physically gave us the opposable thumb and upright posture But what did it do for our mind and and I believe things like thinking and love and humor Were evolutionary steps to make healthy groupness because as group primates for 80 million years we were getting more and more complicated and It's hard enough to live with ourselves or a couple much less as a group And so we needed thinking and love and humor, etc In order to be a healthy group of people and in that context I think of the emotions as the sense organs of the mind as vision is a sense organ for sight That how does the mind have tools to do its thinking and I think that's why they have the emotions And so they're not really bad emotions that I go to war zones and have held 2,000 children the day they died of starvation in my arms and it makes me sad and angry That's the right emotion. It goes up to the mind not to linger in sad and angry, which is where most people Do with the emotions in this day and age, but it goes up to the mind and it says think if you don't like violence if you don't like hunger end it and use your mind and skills in Change to make that happen So in deciding to be those six qualities. I have a little formula intention performance and Consequences, so I will love life is an intention. I'm not saying I'll try to love life. I could love life. I should love life I Will love life so there's no option from the second. I wake up to the second. I go to bed. I will love life as a political act So having an intention. What is your job? It's to in a given moment Given a set of circumstances your life experience and your love of improvisation What performance will put that intention forward and how did you do? Kind of a cybernetic thing so you have an immediate feedback system and if you don't like the consequences you change it And that's as true in medicine as it has been in clowning. I've been a clown every day for 50 years and It is who I am and it is a clown who is a doctor not a doctor who is a clown and So I left that hospital on fire I was one of those people at 18 that was too weird to get dates and I never had to study anything so I had all this free time and I Went out there as an extreme extrovert to engage the world to fall in love with humanity I spent two hours a day for two years every single day calling up wrong numbers to practice talking with people you know what tone what timbre what ideas what thoughts Would make a person want to stay on the phone with me and get curious and be a little sorry when I said I had to go I Still love to do it. I Spent 10 hours a week for two years going up and down elevators in Washington DC because once that door shuts There they are your people and no exit of course, so Yay Because I was wondering What kind of person did I need to be? So that if I saw a person on the elevator that was hurting That I could go right up to them and engage them as a fellow human being and and love them and I'll give you some tricks both of clowning and being human that is develop your sparkly eyes Twinkle twinkle twinkle and notice when they're twinkling mile hits your face. It's in a way, I see the smile as the Sharp part of the wedge and the twinkling eyes as the fat part of the wedge The smile starts something that the eyes are much deeper in that journey and So I went to college and got in medical school after three years because I kind of spent that year being nuts and I thought I Wanted to be a doctor quickly and I entered medical school with the idea to create a medical model that would address every single problem of the way care was Delivered in one model because it's an embarrassment our health care system 95% of my professors were white arrogant pricks That's a diagnosis not a criticism And so there are almost no doctors who acted like a doctor From what I felt a doctor might be a servant for love in care for people And so I didn't have to study much in school. I I created when I graduated in 1971 the gazuntide Institute a hospital and Of course, no one gave me a hospital here patch have a hospital And so I did what people do in poor countries. We made our home a hospital 20 adults three of us physicians Moved into a large six-bedroom house and said we were a hospital open 24 hours a day seven days a week for all manner of medical problems from birth to death We ran this pilot for 12 years During this time we had 500 to a thousand people in our home each month with five to 50 overnight guests a night Now you heard it six Bedroom house with 20 adults and their children there five to 50 overnight guests a night if I told you from the very beginning We decided to use no psychiatric diagnosis or psychiatric medication I think you could say our house was an interesting place to be 3,000 of the 15,000 people that came through our home had severe mental health problems, and we never gave any medication We actually saw it as free live theater and quite interesting at that So there were nights when like a six foot nine very muscular man stood on the dining room table Naked yelling fuck you fuck you fuck you and of course they could as long no physical violence But verbally you could be creative And and so you can be nuts, and we can be nuts, so we might stand up and go And and it was kind of like a Monty Python Medical facility if you're familiar with that British group We did barf alongs with Boolemics. I mean we we had no loyalty to professional distance and And Very quickly we you know let me tell you what we did everything was free Okay, and it wasn't free for poor people. We wanted to eliminate the idea of debt in the medical interaction We never wanted anyone to think they owed something We wanted them excited that they belong to something called community Because we have lost the true nature of community of as a nest of care certainly in the United States We also in that same flavor never had anything to do with insurance companies because we never heard anything nice said about an insurance company And they control the way medicine is practice in the US and probably the most radical thing We did to the conservative population is that we're the only medical facility to refuse to carry malpractice insurance Because quite frankly we need the right to make a mistake because we found out on the first day We didn't know the answers we knew directions and And close observations, so ideally you don't hurt somebody But we need that right we didn't have patient sign waivers. We didn't care if you suit us. What would you sue us for? We didn't have anything So and I'm a family doctor and you know I was trained to be a doctor in seven point eight minutes, and you can be something in seven point eight minutes But you cannot be a doctor. Why would they teach you all that stuff? My initial interview with a new adult patient is four hours long Unbelievably intense four hours. I usually know you better than anyone knows you I ask every question sensitive to life There's not a part of your personal privacy. I don't inquire about on the first date And spending that kind of time with patients. I realize that The vast majority of our adult population has no idea what health is about I found no more than 3% of the people I've interviewed in 48 years had self-esteem Almost no one loves himself. I love me. Yay me Less than 5% had any idea what a day-to-day vitality for life was about yay life. Oh, yeah on your worst day in In fact, the normal adult in the United States didn't like themselves didn't like their marriage didn't like their work And that wasn't why they were coming to the doctor They thought that was what you put up with in life Most patients had nothing to do with being well in medical school I didn't get one lecture on being well not even diet and exercise much less love and spirit or any of the other great things in life and so We wondered how can we trick people to floss their teeth? One way we trick people into aerobic exercise as we had three all-night rock and roll parties a week We weren't exercising. We were partying. Ah, okay where the ethic was dance as long as you can because I'd have a patient come in and Say bring some music you'll dance as long as you can to and then come to a party and dance as long as you can and the average person could dance three times longer in the company of people and they can buy themself and that's You know opening the door to an education of receiving energy from other people