Transcriber: Kent Gustavson Reviewer: Tatjana Jevdjic
We hit that tree with the sound of lightning.
My dad and I were driving through the northwest area of Arkansas.
It was a rainy, cold March 11th afternoon,
exactly six months before 9/11.
It was a wet road and we hydroplaned, and we went down an embankment.
And my dad had a decision to make.
If he went one degree to the left, I would probably be dead today.
If he went one degree to the right, he would be dead.
So he went right down in the middle of the tree.
We hit that tree with the sound of lightning.
The first thing I remember,
clearing all the airbags in front of me,
was looking out my window, and there [were] a few people
running down the hillside, who eventually pulled the door off,
and got me out of the car fairly unhurt.
And then I looked to the left, and there was my dad.
I didn't see the engine sitting between us in the car.
I didn't see the fence post pinning my dad to the seat of the car.
All I saw was a little porthole around his face.
It was the same face I had known for 22 years,
a beautiful, handsome fellow of Swedish ancestry.
But he was pale, and it looked like he was sleeping.
I said, "Dad," thinking I would wake him up. "Dad!"
And he didn't wake up, he didn't move. I said, "Dad, Dad!"
My voice got a little more intense,
and I kept saying, "Dad, Dad, Dad," I don't know how many times.
And then I started shouting, "Dad!"
Finally, his eyes blinked open,
like he was seeing the light of day for the first time.
His eyes blinked open and he looked out for a second,
and then he said three words that I'll never forget.
"Are we dead?"
In that context, it makes sense. You know, "Are we dead?"
We were careening down this mountainside,
headed towards the tree; he was screaming.
He knew we were going to die.
And the second he wakes up, he says, "Are we dead?"
It's like a bad line out of a Hollywood movie.
But it was understandable.
In looking back at this, "Are we dead,"
it really does apply to our lives — to my life.
I think about it every day when I wake up.
Are we dead?
So they got us out of that car; they had to cut my dad out;
I just had a broken arm. They rushed us to the hospital.
It was a hard experience for me — I was in a room all by myself,
and next door they were pulling this fence post out of my father's body.
A terrifying experience.
But through surgery, and through some miracles,
my dad survived.
Three days later,
when they thought I was well enough to go to a regular room,
they rolled me into my dad's intensive care unit room
and I didn't recognize him.
He'd been trying to absorb the blood of all these amazing donors,
been trying to absorb it and make it his own.
In fact, he got so much blood that his blood type changed.
His body really couldn't absorb it well enough.
But I recognized his eyes, and his eyes recognized mine.
And then he said another three words that changed the rest of my life.
But he said them around two-inch tubes
that were going down his throat to keep his lungs inflated.
He mouthed to me,
"We are alive."
We are alive.
From that day forward, my life changed.
I blinked my eyes open that day,
just like my dad fluttered his eyes open after the car accident.
And I've devoted myself ever since —
and for the rest of my life I devote myself —
to things that matter.
I publish books that matter;
I work with clients who are going to go change the world — if I can.
Everything I do I want to do because it matters.
There's a great old expression by the Samurai,
it's thousands and thousands years old.
They said, "Death sharpens life."
This is really the case with this event that happened to us.
We were right at the edge of death,
and it made life so much sharper.
When someone's recovering in your family,
you spend a lot of time just kind of sitting on the couch watching television,
or sitting in their hospital room, playing cards, things like that.
The interesting thing about this "death sharpens life"
is that my dad and I cried a lot at chick flicks.
We would watch the Lifetime Movie Network,
and we'd be weeping.
Our emotions were right here. We'd look up at the sky
and just see how blue it was and how beautiful it was.
And we'd look at people we love, and we'd love them even more.
It was like the emotions were right here,
and we felt everything ten times more
than we ever had before. Death sharpens life.
Life isn't fair, you know?
We get into these situations: we all fail,
we all have someone in our life die.
[There's] a statement that our pastor said
several weeks after the wreck, a close friend of my dad,
"Life isn't fair, but God is good," he said.
And I like to think about my dad and his running.
He was a runner. He ran under five-minute-miles in his fifties.
He ran 25 marathons in his life. He was an amazing runner.
He just loved it; it was his true soul.
He said in a private moment to my mother once,
"If I ever lose my legs, I'll just want to die."
My dad would never run again,
but every step he takes is beautiful.
Life isn't fair, but the world sure is beautiful.
So I had to get away and escape this,
what felt like a cage of hospitals and recovery.
My dad needed to heal, and I needed to just escape.
So I went back to where I lived in the mountains of Washington State,
and I climbed peaks,
and I worked hard during the day, and I sat out on the porch
and played banjo. It was amazing.
But I still couldn't quite feel that healing I was searching for.
Until one day, my best friend grabbed me after work,
and we looked up at Copper Basin, between two huge peaks
and we said, "We want to go up there today."
We scrambled our way up —
we went on the trail, and then we went off the trail,
and we went through alder thickets, and we were scratched up.
We had to get up there. We scrambled up scree slopes.
And then, finally we saw this spectacular waterfall.
In the Cascade Mountains, where there's just water everywhere,
just flowing off the edge of the cliff.
And we climbed up that waterfall.
We went all the way to this beautiful peak way up on top.
We stood there, and we looked at each other, and we knew we had to sing.
♪ And am I born to die ♪
♪ to lay this body down? ♪
♪ Or must my trembling spirit fly ♪
♪ into a world unknown? ♪
And there my life changed again,
because on top of this cliff, standing next to my friend,
I said those words, I sang those words, "Am I born to die,"
and it had a different meaning.
The old hymn had a different meaning.
I thought of my father's words, "Are we dead,"
and I felt his words, "We are alive."
My dad, before the wreck, had been reading this book
by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, a great poet, "Don't Die Before You're Dead".
A great sentiment — but it was spinning through my dad's head
and throughout his morphine dreams after the wreck.
He would kind of get it all mixed up;
he'd say, "Die before you're dead don't," and he got it all mixed up,
but it was running through his head. It was running through his dreams.
Even in the artificial coma he was in, it was running through his head,
"Don't die." "Don't die before you're dead."
And this is what I apply in my own life towards creativity.
When there are hard times, when you fail, when there are all these things —
people say to do one thing and you do another.
Don't die before you're dead. Don't settle.
There's another story about my dad where I was in the hospital room with him,
and his body didn't look like itself.
He was in an artificial coma so he wouldn't hurt himself for a couple weeks.
We would just sit there and we'd sing him songs,
tell him what we were doing that day, and crack jokes.
And the sort of mischievous guy I am, every time the nurse would come in,
I would crack jokes with her.
And she came in one time, and I said,
"So, what are all these doohickeys up here?"
I knew what some of them were,
but there were like 14 bags and like 17 buzzers,
and everything is beeping and buzzing all day long, right?
I said, "What do all these things do?"
And she said, "Well, you know, this does this, and that does that."
She stopped on one and she said, "Well, this is the heart rate monitor,
and your dad has 100 heart rate — that's pretty good.
My heart sank out of my chest.
I used to run with my dad.
When I was in high school I was pretty fast —
I went to [the State Meet] — but my dad was always a little bit faster.
And we'd run together —
my heart rate would be 180 or 190, or 200 even.
My heart was going like you wouldn't believe.
And we'd stop and we'd take our heart rates,
and I'd say, "Dad, what's your heart rate,"
and he'd say, "Oh, 100."
He ran marathons, under five-minute miles
at 100 heart rate, 110 maybe, 120.
His resting heart rate was about 40.
He couldn't give blood because his heart was so slow.
His heart beat like this: boom, boom, boom.
His heart was as big as Texas.
It's the reason he made it through that wreck.
There I was, staring at that heart rate monitor,
and it said 100.
My dad was in an artificial coma.
He was running a marathon in that coma.
That's the kind of intensity I want to live with.
Is there life after birth?
I have a beautiful little 2.5-year-old niece — she's amazing!
A year ago, she got her first pickle.
Oh my gosh, it was incredible. It disappeared — a big long pickle.
My mom, her granny, gave it to her.
She put that pickle in her mouth and it didn't emerge for 3 or 4 hours.
And it came out and looked the same as when it went in!
But she loved that pickle.
And she loves when she sees her Uncle Kent come into the room.
Her eyes just light up.
Kids love deeply.
They love food, they love everything!
And they have courage like you wouldn't believe.
They'll jump off the back of a couch in a second.
You've got to stop them from a little bit of that, right.
It's beautiful.
Is there life after birth? Do we have that?
Anais Nin said, "Life shrinks or expands in proportion with one's courage."
It's all about courage. Do we have the courage?
So I've got this thing: I love squirrel suits, or wing suits.
These things are amazing.
You can jump off a cliff and fly with a squirrel suit.
So I think of my PhD, maybe my 10,000 hours of guitar playing,
you know, my teaching; all the things I've done in my life.
And this is the same for you — all of the amazing things you've done —
they make up your wing suit.
So, when you're standing on this metaphorical cliff,
and you're looking out over the world,
you don't have to worry, because this wing suit is there.
So you can fail, you can fail, but you're not going to fall.
You've got this wing suit underneath you.
Leap!
The last story I want to tell you is about my obsession for guitars.
I was in college and I'd save up every little penny and then buy a guitar.
And then I'd save a little more and I'd trade that guitar in.
Then spend a little more and then I had two guitars
and then three, then four. Then I traded those four in
for one really good one; I was pretty obsessed.
So I walked out of that hospital after the car wreck
into the rainy day, cold Arkansas air,
and I wanted to take a one-block walk.
I was pretty broken, so I was kind of hobbling down the street
with my broken arm.
And I said, "Okay, I'm going to turn to the right —
I'll just go around the block here,
and then I'll come back around, and I'll go back in the hospital,
and everything will be fine.
And then, off in the distance, like Shangri-La, like water in the desert,
there was this sign. It said, "Guitar".
I walked 5 or 6 blocks to this guitar shop,
and I stepped inside, and there was this huge man, Sleepy LaBeef,
playing a little guitar. There were harmonicas in the case.
It was beautiful — I felt at home.
In any case, I spent almost all the money I had,
bought that guitar — somehow hobbled home
with the new guitar and my broken arm.
I got back to the hospital and this little dark room
above the hospital where my dad was, my mom was staying.
And that night, I put my broken arm on my mom's shoulder,
and she put her left hand on the guitar and formed the chords.
And I put my right hand on the guitar
and I finger picked the chords.
And we sang in harmony,
"There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole."
And my mother cried for the first time since the accident.
Creativity can heal us.
Creativity can inspire us every day to blink our eyes open —
it inspires me to get out of bed in the morning.
One of my favorite teachers, Daria Semegen, said,
"You should listen to your own music
as if you've never heard it before."
It's impossibly hard, but you've got to try.
Every day, I try to listen to my own music
as if I've never heard it before.
And the last thing I want to leave you with
is that incredible three days where my dad said,
"[Are we] dead," and then around those
big tubes, he whispered,
"We are alive."
(Applause)
Thank you.