Transcriber: Lucía Hernández Reviewer: Hani Eldalees
Question. Do you have the courage to try something new?
My story begins after a 14 hour flight,
seven thousand miles away from Louisiana to the most populous city on the planet,
Tokyo, Japan. A population of over 38 million people.
It's an amazing, amazing place.
My family and I relocated there on a new job assignment.
After the first week, I really I slept like a baby.
I woke up at 3AM every morning crying
to say it was intimidating is an understatement.
Different place, different culture, different language.
It was quite a challenge for my family and I. But,
My daughter and I decided to create a challenge based on
a question that we’d both heard earlier in the year, and that question was,
when was the last time you did something for the first time?
We created a first time experience challenge, and these were the rules.
You had to basically have a first time experience once a week.
That experience could be meeting a new person, going to a new place,
experiencing a new thing. You could use any and all of your senses
and you had to jolt it and report back at family meeting at the end of the week
because we were having family meetings while we were way abroad.
It was a fantastic experience, trust me.
So, through this experience, these first time experiences,
we met a number of wonderful people.
On the slide behind me, you see there a kimono ceremony,
one of my friends asked his mom to come over and teach us how to wear kimonos,
how to put them on and how to wear them.
And we had a tea ceremony with them. It was fantastic.
The other picture you see there was Chinese New Year where friends invited us
over for Chinese New Year's dinner, had wonderful food,
many things I had never tried before. But first time experience.
The other photo is with friends in Berlin, Germany,
another place I had never been. But they came, took me. Show me around.
Just a wonderful first time experience.
And that final picture is an interesting one that’s on the streets of Shanghai,
China. I was walking to work and a group of school aged children saw me
and started yelling Obama, Obama.
I was flattered, to say the least. Very much so.
And they wanted to take a picture with me so....
I said, of course I'd be happy to take a picture with you.
I still don’t know if they thought they really meant Obama or not,
but so be it. I had a wonderful first time experience with those students.
They touched my hair, they touched my skin.
It was something that was a first time experience for them and was wonderful.
We experience fabulous places here,
the Great Wall of China had a chance to work.
I didn’t walk the entire Great Wall.
It’s quite a walk, to say the least.
Experienced again, Bali, Indonesia. That's a cliff in Bali, Indonesia.
Taj Mahal, beautiful location. And then I climbed Mount Fuji.
Now, Mount Fuji is one of the most popular attractions in Japan.
It's a climbable mountain. It actually consists of three volcanoes.
There are active volcanoes as well, but it hasn't erupted since the 17th.
So my friends and I in Asia decided to climb Mount Fuji, but there was one issue.
Well, there were three issues. One, they want to climb it.
You can only climb in two months of the year.
We climbed. We chose July, of course, chose a Friday.
The challenge was it was Friday the 13th. Now, they aren't superstitious.
But I was. The other issue, a typhoon was coming. Yes. In the Pacific
They have typhoons here in the Atlantic side of the continent.
We have of the world. We have hurricanes, of course, now in Japan also,there are
earthquakes that occur every day. They have about five thousand a year.
I’m used to hurricanes being from the south,
but earthquakes are another thing.
So they wanted to climb this mountain Friday the 13th with the typhoon coming.
With the person of African-American descent,
first time experience, needless to say, eight hours up, four hours down,
we made it, survived it, wonderful first time experience now lost two toenails
that grew back. But nonetheless, it was fantastic for me.
We experienced fantastic things. The top picture, you see a lion walk.
I walk with three lions. The oldest was 11 months old. Her name was Sarah.
Now my astrological sign is Leo.
And as such, I felt a bond with those lions and they did not attack me.
And I'm here today because of that.
And on the right is a picture of me in Malaysia.
And I was there with my wife and family.
The little guy in the back is a Malaysian monkey.
And I took that picture before he snatched the water bottle from my wife.
I would not have been able to take that picture before that.
Then you see again, food, fun and fellowship.
And on that other picture, you see a toilet. Now, why a toilet?, you may ask.
Well, when we were in Japan the first week,
we were out visiting schools with our daughter. At one of the schools,
the principal asks my daughter, what's your favorite thing about Japan?
My daughter quickly and without hesitation , said the toilet.
I'm like, we were embarrassed. We were like, you're interviewing for the school.
You're eight years old. You got to come up with something.
But she said the toilets, you know why , because that toilet was a smart toilet.
It had buttons. it would warm you, it would squirt you. It would massage you.
I even thought about becoming
a toilet salesman after experiencing those toilets in Japan.
They were fantastic, real talks.
What targets you can innovate anything is what I found out.
You can innovate anything.
What other lessons did we learn from first time experiences?
Well, we learn to face our fears, we learn to face our fears,
found out that on the other side of fear are some fantastic,
fulfilling experiences. We also learn to find our fantasies, explore,
do things you've never done before. It was amazing for us. It fueled fun.
We had some wonderful, wonderful experiences just through that challenge.
You know what else happened? Well, It calls us
to accelerate our knowledge It really helped us learn more.
We explored those curious areas that we may not have done if we hadn't had
the challenge, it facilitated a deeper understanding of different cultures.
It also fulfills some of our lifelong dreams, living abroad and going places.
We’ve lived on many continents.
We traveled to Africa, Asia, experienced safaris and beyond.
And probably, most importantly, they helped us without purpose.
We found that maybe we were there abroad, different person, different culture,
different things to help others learn more about us
and that we are not to be feared. We were to be embraced.
Most importantly, I think first time experiences may be able to help us cure
some of the world's greatest ills, some of the isms of the world's racism,
instead of judging somebody,
maybe you can use a first time experience to go
and meet someone to try to understand them.
If they're different from you,
maybe it could help us cure sexism instead of talking down about
the opposite sex. Maybe you can go and have a conversation with them
and understand why they do what they do and why we do what we do and so on
and so on. Classism, someone who may be of a different economic structure,
first time experience, get to know them, understand them,
see what helps them be who they are. Ageism, spend time with our seniors.
They have given their lives for us.
And we're here because we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.
I was taught by Giants. I was loved by Giants, and even to this day,
I'm still being loved by my ancestors through and through.
When was the last time you did something for the first time?
Have a first time experience today. Thank you.