[MUSIC PLAYING]
I have always been a person that believes
that a single moment in time can change a person's life.
And it's kind of true if you think about it--if you look
at your life and what makes it a great story, it's the moments.
That's what we remember, that's what we treasure.
And some of those moments are awesome; they're epic.
Some of them can even be tragic.
But it is the significance of those experiences
that make them a moment.
Now more than ever.
It's a weird time right now.
We're living in a pandemic, where it's just different,
and we're going through a lot.
And we have struggled and faced things
that most people that we know in our lifetime
have never had to face.
But I still believe that the better we are creating moments
in the lives of our family members
and ourselves, the more we're able to create a better story.
You see, not too long ago there was a little guy.
And this little child, this kid when he would go to school,
he didn't struggle with science or English,
that wasn't his problem.
The little kid just struggled sitting still.
And he would sit at his desk, and he would just,
he would tap, constantly.
His right hand would go, his feet would go,
his left hand would go.
And if you've ever sat in a meeting next to someone,
and they're tapping their pen, or they're constantly
moving or tapping their desk, it gets annoying.
And all the other kids, they called him the twitcher,
he got nicknamed the tapper and was consistently
just bullied and bullied.
Even the teachers would look at the young man
and consistently say, "Can you stop?"
Like, "Young man, I need you to hold still; stop tapping."
And it happened again and again and again.
The kid eventually got sent to the principal's office.
And he took the long walk down the hall, he was nervous,
he sat down with the principal.
And the principal looked over and said, "Why are you here?
Why did you get sent here?"
And the kid just said, "I have a hard time sitting still."
And the principal thinks for a minute,
and he goes, "OK, all right, listen.
I don't know what else to do.
I'm going to send you back to class."
"But here's the thing, when you go back to class,
and you feel like you need to move,"
he said, "kid, just sit on your hands.
OK don't hit anything.
Just sit on your hands."
And the kid thought it was a decent idea.
The principal thought it was a stroke of genius
and dismisses the kid out of his office.
He goes down the hallway back into his class.
And the kid sits down, and he starts to pay attention.
And not three minutes goes by, and then
all a sudden, he starts to tap.
His right hand goes, then his left hand goes,
but then he remembered that he's got to sit on his hands.
But when he sat on his hands, his feet would start tapping.
You guys, it happened again and again and again, until one day
there was a teacher.
And his name was Mr. Jensen.
He'd been teaching for a long time, white hair,
had big Coke bottle glasses, always
wore suspenders and a red tie.
And he looked at the boy as he was tapping in class,
and he just gently said, "Young man in the back," he said,
"you and me, we're going to have a conversation after class."
The kid's nervous.
The bell rings, class dismissed.
It's a completely empty room minus Mr. Jensen
and the little boy.
The teacher goes to the back of the room;
he grabbed a big chair and a little chair
and motions for the kid to come over.
He says, "Come here, come here, sit down, sit down."
And the kid, thinking he's in so much trouble,
watches as Mr. Jensen leans forward
and he just says, "Listen, do you know why we're talking?"
He said, "Do you know why I told you to stay after class?"
And the boy said, "Yeah, it's because I move.
It's because I have a hard time sitting still.
It's the only reason anybody wants to talk to me."
And Mr. Jensen leaned forward, and he said, "Listen, I want
you to know I know who you are.
I've heard about you.
And you're the kid that everybody teases.
You get nicknamed 'the twitcher'; you get called
'the tapper.'
You're the kid that's on the list.
All the other teachers, they talk about you.
You're the kid that constantly taps.
You tap in my class, and you tap in everybody else's class.
"You're the kid that got sent to the principal's office
two weeks ago because you just can't sit still."
He said, "But I want you to know that I've been watching you."
And he said, "I just, I simply watch.
I've sat back.
And every time when you do your assignment,
you'll start tapping your right hand,
and then literally at the same time
you'll start moving your left hand at a totally
different rhythm."
He said, in big adult words, "We call that ambidextrous."
And the little kid's like, "amble what?"
He had no idea what that meant.
And Mr. Jensen said, "OK I got to try something."
He said, "Can you tap your head and rub your belly
at the same time?"
He said, "I gotta know."
He said, "Just try it."
And the little kid gave it a go, and he could do it.
And then Mr. Jensen said, "OK can you switch it?"
He said, "Can you rub your head and then tap your belly?"
And literally, without thinking about it, the kid could do it.
Mr. Jensen, he leaned back in his chair, he folded his arms,
and he laughed.
And he looked at the kid, and he said, "I knew it.
I knew it."
And he leaned forward and simply said,
"I don't think you're a problem.
I just think you're a drummer."
Remember when I told everybody as I started today that I am
the type of person that believes in the power of moments--single
moments in time that have the ability to change
a person's life?
Because in that moment Mr. Jensen, the old teacher,
he leaned back in his desk, and he opened up the top drawer.
And he reached inside, and he took out my very first pair
of drumsticks.
My very first pair.
I was the kid that was nicknamed.
I was the kid was bullied.
I was the kid that was teased.
I was constantly deemed a problem.
And it took one person in my life who saw an opportunity.
For 22 years, I've had the opportunity
to tour and record all over the world, playing drums.
I remember when I graduated high school,
and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.
And so what do you do when you have
no idea what you want to do?
You go to college, right?
So I went to school.
I graduated in 2012 with a bachelor's degree and zero
college debt.
Why?
Music scholarships, baby.
And I'm not telling you that to go, "Oh wow, good for you,
Clint."
Or, "What was that like?"
I'm telling you that because of one person
who instilled hope by creating a moment that
represented possibilities.
And for an educator or a parent or anybody
in any career, anybody in our lives,
I think that we find the greatest hope in instilling
hope in other people.
Mr. Jensen, all he simply did for me
in creating hope was he communicated
my potential and my worth so well to the point
that I saw it within myself.
He helped me to see the possibilities of what could be.
He helped me to see the solution, not the problem.
He created a moment that helped me to write a better story.
And I know right now it's really easy to turn on the news.
It's really easy to flip through social media
and see what's wrong, to look at our society,
to look at our circumstances, to look at this pandemic,
and to worry.
But I promise that the better we get at looking at what's right,
looking at what's good, seeing the possibilities,
looking at a problem and seeing the solution,
it allows us to create hope within our lives.
It allows us to create a better story.
And it's done simply by just creating small moments.
Mr. Jensen literally designed a moment of hope.
And we can do the same things.
In the Book of Alma there's a scripture that talks about that
it is by small and simple things that great things come to pass.
And in my life, some of the greatest moments of hope
have come through just small and simple moments,
where somebody believed in me.
Somebody helped me to see further
than I could see on my own.
It was through a moment where somebody
gave some sort of encouragement, or they were there
at the right time at the right place, or even a moment of hope
where I got down on my knees and I prayed for guidance.
And that was a moment where I received revelation,
I received direction.
I think sometimes in life, if we can just simply
go as far as we can see, when we get there,
we have the ability to see further.
But when we surround ourselves with good people doing
good things that have good perspectives,
we allow ourselves to live a better reality.
And whatever is real to us influences our behavior.
And when we set ourselves up around positive things,
we create positive hope.
We create a better story.
My mom, growing up, she always told me, she said, "Clint,
little by little makes a little a lot."
And there's a really great quote by Mother Teresa where
she says that "sometimes in life, our efforts,
they might just seem like they're a drop in the bucket,
but at least it's a drop in the bucket."
There's something to be said for trying,
for moving as far as you can see, and when you get there
you can usually see further.
And when we surround ourselves with people
that when there's those days, those hard days when
we can't see, when we don't know what to do, and all we see
is the problems, it's the Mr. Jensens
that come into our lives.
It's the power of a Heavenly Father.
It's the power of a Savior.
It's the power of an advocate that looks at a problem
and says there's possibility, that looks at people like us
and says, "I will help you to live a better story.
It's the power of a Mr. Jensen."
In our lives right now, we've been given two things.
We've been given time, obviously, to be here.
But second, we've been given the opportunity
to choose what we're going to do with the time that we have.
I hope you'll choose to see the good,
choose to see what's right, with yourself and with others.
And in doing so, you will create a more hopeful life.
And lastly, I hope you'll choose to be a Mr. Jensen.
And if you do, I promise that the best is yet to come.