morning I’m ecstatic to be with you here
today at the North Carolina School of
Science in maths 2017 TEDx conference
and I want to start off by asking you a
single question do you have any life
advice okay welcome back that it’s over
the past five hundred and seventy-five
days since June 18th 2015 I’ve been
asking hundreds of people that same
question do you have any life advice and
I’ve used it to fill up notebooks this
is the second and a half one because I
started one finished it started another
one didn’t feel right so I moved on to a
third one here today after I write this
or say this speech show you’re writing
my two thousand two hundred and tenth
note it really build up over time so
today what I really want to do is get
you thinking backwards you know forward
thinking I mean that’s usually the theme
of Ted we want to get you thinking about
your future but today I want to get you
thinking about your past and your
experiences I’m gonna start off by
telling you a little story from my life
and also some of you may not be used to
a slanted haircut but it’s not the worst
so here I wrote a list and you can’t
really read it so I’m gonna make it a
little clearer for you of life events
now nothing’s are really gonna make
sense but I’m gonna explain that first
one right here so I was young about five
years old probably around the time I was
bald my mom had this a glass bowl all
right beautiful glass bowl but it’s not
the kind you eat out of it was the kind
you put on display so she put it on a
brick wall outside the house and I was
young and I had a little mud pit
probably about the size of this rug like
to hop in there you know
lather around like a little pig I also
collected rocks now my parents when they
did the landscaping of the yard they got
these rocks at all these tiny little
fossils in them all these little clam
shells maybe some little fishes it was
awesome
now despite the fact that there were
thousands of rocks
I thought each one was so special so
every day I’d go down the driveway
collect maybe four or five and throw him
in my mud pit to hang out with me and
one day started throwing them you know
and you know where this is going glass
bowl rocks yeah and I started throwing
them past the bowl and my mom came out
and she said son don’t throw those rocks
you’re gonna break my bowl I said don’t
worry mom I got this I’m not gonna hit
your bowl she goes back inside my dad
comes out of his shop and he says son
don’t throw rocks you’re gonna break
your mom’s Bowl I said don’t worry dad I
called him papa actually Andy gave me
that dad look you know you guys know
that look I said I won’t throw any more
rocks so he went back inside the shop
and I started throwing rocks again
because I trusted my aim now into that
moment where you screw up and say you
fall off a bike or something your life
flashes before your eyes time slows down
now I didn’t have much life to flash
before my eyes yet but time did slow
down has that one little rock covered in
clam shells and fishes Kareem toward the
bowl touched it and it bursts into a
thousand pieces and the first thing I
thought was all the choice profanities
drats and her favorite one in traffic oh
shoot
the next thing I thought was oh dear
which parent do I tell first my mom
because it’s her Bowl well my dad cuz
it’s not his bowl so I told my dad first
I walk in the shop he said dad I broke
mom’s bull and he grabs me by the back
of the neck and he marches me inside to
my mom and I say mom I broke your bowl
and she says with those rocks I told you
not to throw ya
those rocks mom and she does that mom
thing where she gets down on her it’s a
little lower looks you in the eye eye to
eye I’m only about yay tall so then she
says son you made a mistake I understand
I hope you learned your lesson so since
that day whenever I mess up I tell my
what that goes back to was I was five
years old around there and now I’m 18
and that little lesson I still carry
with me today see I want to get you guys
thinking about your experiences what
made you what you are today a good
example of that would be to think about
your thoughts okay you buddy how you
pronounce our last name Baum Z all right
you ever remember being a little kid and
wanting a toy really really badly
alright now when you were a little kid
you never thought of your thoughts has
childish right no they were just as
important as your thoughts are now me
wanting a cookie at four years old is
just as important as me wanting to get
into college now not on the large scale
but in my head because we are every
single agent one so I’m still that
five-year-old that just broke my mom’s
bowl but I’ve had a few other
experiences since then with the help of
my little notebook here I’ve gotten to
meet a lot of interesting people this
past summer I was in an airport
California I met a lady named Aban from
ivory coast of Africa she told me how
her husband had died in February and she
was going to Seattle to celebrate his
life with some friends and the reason I
met her was because she was struggling
carrying her bag and she was going to
the same terminal as myself and I guess
we’re all going to the same terminal in
the end but I said can I carry your bag
for you and she said yes and my dad
having recently been amputated was
wheeling around in a wheelchair he
hadn’t gotten in this prosthetic leg yet
so I’m carrying his bag and I’m carrying
her bag but the load she was carrying on
her heart was much heavier yesterday I
was talking to some of the adults at
school a lady named Miss Alex was
telling me about a bad dating experience
how she almost went on a date with a
neo-nazi unknowingly and the things you
went into and you take the time to ask
people are absolutely incredible so from
my own experience and from the
experiences of those I’ve run into I’m
gonna flip through a few things here
number five in my first book some people
will be beautiful because what they say
do
like act like think like etc remember
that beauty can be in a lot of forms
don’t stop to smell the roses too often
love who you are no matter what and in
this age where a lot of people like to
base their love of their self off their
social media presence or how many people
like them or who they hang out with or
what parties they go to that’s important
to remember where things simply because
you like them not always for the social
parts now how many of you saw that I was
wearing Birkenstocks with my business
casual attire hey that’s one all right
my fancy socks too it’s easy to remember
the feeling of the dream than the events
of it and see when I started running out
a little observations to make about life
I got really really detailed if it’s in
quotes somebody else told it to me
people like to offer new perspectives to
things the golden life is to plant trees
that you’ll never feel the shade of and
things like that are important to
remember now with the world that can be
falling apart there’s more plastic in
the ocean than there are fish and the
generation right now that’s growing up
my classmates we got our job ahead of us
to prepare the world and our kids so
hopefully they can have fish now I
haven’t found my answers in a bottle a
person of a book or found ignorance and
bliss I’m open to suggestion last year
didn’t go the best my dad was diagnosed
with stage 4 cancer he was chilling out
on death’s porch for a while and that
was a rough time and I started looking
for happiness that’s where the book
really came in because well I didn’t ask
people how to be happy I started asking
them more and more in-depth questions
and some of them are sort of random in
this summer I went up to st. Louis I
started writing longer things and the
summary of this is we had been on a bus
for two days and we started brushing our
teeth outside the portable lavatory is
outside the arch of st. Louis that giant
metal structure that’s a gateway to
manifest destiny
and I tendon came out said that waters
not for oral consumption take that as
you may the river water was brown and
nearby it’s a general note and something
really important that I found in all
this was something my mom told me right
after she told me how sick my dad was
she told me it’s gonna be okay we just
don’t know how okay is though now it’s
hard to compress a whole life into nine
minutes I’ve actually been over my talk
now but I want you guys to leave here
today thinking about the little events
that made you make your own list if you
need to and go off the premise that
whatever you remember the most has
changed you the most
thank you
[Music] [Applause]