- Welcome to TEDx Lehigh River.

My name is George Hrab.

I'll be hosting this program for you.

Today we have a wonderful segment of three speakers from our TEDx Lehigh River talk that was held back in March 2020.

That was called Always/Never, Sometimes/Maybe.

It was one of our main events.

And we're going to feature three speakers to give you a taste of what TEDx Lehigh River is all about.

With me, of course, today is Lisa Getzler.

- Hello, Lisa.

How are you?

- Hi, nice to see you.

I'm wonderful.

Thanks.

- Can you believe it was back in March?

- No, it's hard to imagine that the last time we were here in this studio was the day before the world changed.

- Amazing.

Amazing.

So we are here, of course, following all of our protocols to be as safe as possible.

But we were so excited, we wanted to bring you these three speakers, which we'll be featuring in just a minute.

So, Lisa, you were the curator and the licensee of TEDx Lehigh River.

What made you want to bring a TEDx event to the Lehigh Valley?

- Well, George, the Lehigh Valley deserved one.

That's the answer, really.

We had been talking among a group of community members and, uh, folks at PBS39 and Allentown Symphony Hall about what is the kind of feeling among our community members in the Lehigh Valley.

And we said TEDx is an opportunity for us to meet more people and hear about what's happening in their world, and to share with each other in a way that we hadn't seen before in the Lehigh Valley.

- Since we've started, how many speakers have there been approximately?

- Well, each year we range between six and eight or nine, depending on the length of the talks and sort of the area around which the ideas are congregating through our theme.

So I guess that would add up to something like 35.

- That's amazing.

It's amazing.

35 people that have been featured.

Speaking of themes, so every main event has a theme.

Like I mentioned, the one from March was Always/Never, Sometimes/Maybe, which was a fun theme.

What were some of the other themes - that we've had so far?

- Oh, gosh.

Well, we've had...

So our very first event, we said we want to just bring the community together.

And that was when we came up with the tagline for TEDx Lehigh River, "Where people meet and ideas flow."

And so interestingly, we couldn't understand why we couldn't get the name TEDx Lehigh Valley for our organization.

But at the time there was a restriction on using geographical locations.

So Lehigh River it was.

And from there we looked at a variety of different areas of interest and...frankly, I can't remember a single one.

- Well, we had Why Not?

That was one.

- Of course.

That was your year.

- Yes, that's my year.

- And I think two of the others that I really resonated with were Giant Steps and At Your Fingertips.

- Let's go look at our first one.

I think that'll be fun.

Our first speaker is Jacob Emery, and his talk was called Are There Any Truly Original Ideas?

Check this out.

Enjoy.

- I've got some really bad news for everybody here.

We've never had a truly original idea.

Not you.

Not me.

All ideas are always unoriginal.

This is because of the way that knowledge relates to time.

You'll never have a truly original idea.

All ideas will always be related to some past idea, some present idea and some future idea.

And if you, like me, have ever made the mistake of letting go of an idea because it's already been done before, then I invite you to rethink that mistake.

There are no original ideas.

But that doesn't mean that unoriginal ideas are bad.

In fact, I want you to give up entirely the notion that you have to be original at all.

You have nothing to lose by pursuing an unoriginal idea, because your idea will be a good, great, amazing, innovative idea that improves, builds, clarifies, distills and sharpens an already preexisting idea.

The idea of originality is a cultural myth.

It needlessly discourages communication, stifles...

Excuse me.

Stifles innovation and perpetuates an intellectual isolationist lie.

Ironically, I thought I was the only one who felt this way.

All through undergrad, I had a really hard time coming up with interesting, original questions to ask about the books that we read.

I was a philosophy major struggling to do what we are supposed to do, which is to ask really annoying questions until people ignore us.

But in ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, logic, I had a very, very difficult time coming up with anything to ask.

I thought that I just wasn't very good at it.

Until four years ago, I took an Africana philosophy class and I presented a paper in that class that focused almost entirely on just one book.

I integrated some ideas from other texts we read.

And after class that day, my professor pulled me aside and she said that what I presented that day was an original idea that no-one else had written about that book.

I was shocked.

The information I presented was simply an amalgam of information that you could have gotten just from that text, it was nothing but a recombination of ideas.

Nothing about it, I felt, was truly original.

And this wasn't just imposter syndrome.

At that moment, I felt a sneaking suspicion of something that I had thought for a long time.

There aren't any original ideas.

As grad students, we're told that we have to publish or perish, that we have to come up with an original, significant contribution to the field, but I don't think that we can ever really do it, for three reasons.

First, every idea is related to some idea in the past.

And what this means is any idea you have right now exists in relation to one or more ideas from the past.

Second, every idea you have right now is related to some idea from right now, and what this means is that every present idea exists in relation to one or more current ideas.

And third, every idea you have right now is related to some idea in the future, which means that some future idea depends on your present idea.

To demonstrate, I'll tell you a little bit more about my work in that Africana philosophy class.

The sum total of my work in that class focused almost entirely on just two books, but the idea that I was developing at the time relied greatly on other ideas from the past, including... ...but not limited to the entire Western philosophical canon that I had been exposed to in undergrad, a smattering of Asian philosophy, and the other four books we read in that class.

And of course, my idea in that presentation has been with me ever since and necessarily influences the work I do now four years later.

The work I did in that class exists in relation to other books we read at the time, other books we read in the past and other books we read in the future.

And my idea then exists in relation to and is dependent on ideas through time.

As philosophers, we always have to come up with as many examples as we possibly can to prove our argument.

I'm going to lean into that tradition tonight and I'm going to try to further demonstrate my point by talking about a book from the beginning of philosophy.

I'm going to talk about justice in Plato's Republic.

And by the way, in case anybody asks, talking about justice in Plato's Republic is all anybody who talks about Plato's Republic talks about.

Plato's Republic is arguably the founding document of Western philosophy.

It's a book about, among other things, what justice is and how the nature of justice influences the political formation of a city state.

This goes on for like 300 pages.

It's long and it's complicated, but a third of the way in, and I'm on page 111 of the Blum translation, if you'll all open your books, please.

Socrates, the main character, is talking to Plato's older brother Glaucon, and they land on a definition of justice that I think you're going to find familiar.

Since it's a dialog, I'm going to act it out.

When I look this way I'm Socrates.

And when I look this way, I'm Glaucon.

Let's see if I made any sense.

What we said at the beginning about founding a city, we said that every person in that city should perform that function of the city that is best suited to their nature.

Right?

Yeah, we said that.

Excellent.

So justice, then, is the minding of one's own business and not being a busybody.

We've both heard this before from other people and we've said it ourselves.

Yeah, we said that.

Awesome, so the practice of minding your own business, that's probably justice, and do you know how I infer this?

No, I'm sorry, I was just saying yes to get you to stop talking.

So there is one another 190 pages of this because Glaucon wasn't paying attention.

But we're not going to worry about all that.

Tonight we're just going to worry about what we just said about justice, because I know you've heard it before.

I know that at some point you were probably doing something you shouldn't have been doing and somebody nearby hollered "Mind your own business."

We've all been reminded to mind our own business, and none of us needed to read Plato to know that we ought to mind our own business sometimes.

It's got to be one of the most unoriginal takes on justice out there, and yet over 2,000 years ago, Plato wrote it down in the foundational document of Western political thought.

He even says that it's something they've heard before from other people, so we know that it exists in relation to their past.

And that book will be with us probably forever, so we know that it exists in relation to their future.

So not only is Plato's Republic unoriginal in the sense that they're talking about something they didn't invent - justice - in ways they didn't invent - minding your own business - but it exists in relation with and it's dependent on other ideas through time.

This is a great book.

It doesn't matter how unoriginal minding your own business is.

And it doesn't matter that there's like 300 pages of coming up with different ways to mind your own business.

It's such a good book, in fact, that if you've watched The Good Place on NBC, then you've already seen different ways to build a just city, just like Plato did.

And you've seen what happens when you don't mind your own business in the just city.

It crumbles.

The Republic exists in relation through time with The Good Place, a show that's been called the most original sitcom on television.

I've been saying that there are no original ideas.

The Republic and The Good Place exist in intimate relation through time, because you could just watch The Good Place and learn everything you need to know about justice from Plato's Republic.

In this case, the movie really is better than the book.

The Good Place is borrowing directly from Plato's Republic, Descartes' Meditations, Dante's Inferno, Kant's Ethics, Scanlon's What We Owe To Each Other, Sartre's No Exit, just to name a few.

You'll learn all the same stuff about justice.

That's why it's a great show.

That's also why The Republic is a great book.

The show might be unoriginal in content, maybe, but it improves and it builds and it clarifies and it distills and it sharpens thousands of years of ideas about justice.

Your idea, my idea, our ideas are valuable and good, even if they've been done before.

Don't let the myth of originality stop you from seeing your idea through.

Everyone's borrowing something off of somebody else, whether they know it or not.

Even the greatest thinkers of the past and the present and the future.

So go for it.

Write your Republic.

Thank you very much.

- Thank you, Jacob.

- Go for it, the idea of go for it.

- Isn't it a perfect a perfect TEDx talk, especially for speakers who sometimes worry about what are they going to talk about?

- Absolutely, George.

When Jacob brought us this subject matter, I said, what could be a better way than to start a TEDx Lehigh River event than to have someone who has studied it talk about where ideas come from and the pressure that we put on ourselves to have unique and brand new ideas when in fact, Jacob couldn't be more correct by saying we are layering on and standing on the shoulders of those who came before us.

- I mean, the idea that that even Plato didn't have...

It makes you...

I can feel myself relax on a certain level as a person who tries to create things occasionally, as often as I can.

The impetus of writing a song or coming up with something creative, you just feel everything's been done before.

But that's OK!

- Absolutely.

There are 12 notes and they're combined In a myriad of ways to create music.

- Sure.

The combinations have been done, you know, and if you think we're dealing with 100,000 words pretty much, give or take, and yet that's OK. And it's the refining.

And I love when he said philosophy students, we ask annoying questions until people ignore us.

- Isn't that perfect?

- Perfect.

- That's absolutely perfect.

I just love that.

Did you work directly with Jacob?

- Were you his coach?

- Yes.

So the way the process works when speakers come in with ideas, I start speaking with them about it shortly after we get them on board with wanting to participate.

And then we spend about eight weeks in the coaching process to get them ready to deliver their talk.

They make it look easy, but it's a lot of work.

- Oh, yeah.

I bet.

I can remember too.

I mean, I was fortunate enough to be to be one of the speakers and yeah, it was such a such an enriching experience too, and the support that you provided and then everyone provided was just wonderful.

- Just wonderful.

- For me too.

- Yeah.

Let's move on to our next speaker, number two, Connor M Moriarty.

And his talk is called What Kant Missed About Human Nature and Finding It in Nature.

Now, a thing to remember when you're watching this, he talks about Kant's categorical imperative and it's the rule of conduct is absolute.

What does that mean?

It basically means that you do something for one reason.

That's kind of the thing to think about and remember when you're watching this.

but it takes a lovely turn and it's perfect for the environment that we're in now, sort of stuck in our own homes and how we can deal with that.

So here it is, Connor Moriarty and What Kant Missed About Human Nature And Finding It In Nature.

Enjoy.

- Good evening, everyone.

My name is Connor and I'm a recovering psychotherapist.

Allow me to explain.

I had a dream a little while ago of being a mediator in conflict zones.

In fact, I was in grad school studying just that.

Before that, I wanted to be an outdoor educator and a wilderness first responder.

Before that, I wanted to be a Navy SEAL or a Coast Guard rescue swimmer.

Before that, a marine biologist, and I'll tell you a little bit more about that process later in my talk.

Before that, according to my mom, who's here tonight - hi, Mom - I wanted to be a fireman who sings pretty songs.

It's good to keep that in the back pocket for later.

So in grad school, I was studying international peace and conflict resolution with a focus on mediation in international affairs, hence the whole charging into conflict zones thing.

During that time, I got a job at a local nonprofit, working with kids that had been ordered by a judge to attend anger management programing.

After some months of working with these kiddos, a pattern emerged.

They all had trauma histories.

I went back to my academic advisor, sat down in her office, shared this observation, and she said, hey, you want to be our first guinea pig in a new dual degree program in partnership with the counseling psychology department, where you're going to focus on learning about trauma and recovery.

So that's what I did.

And after graduating, I became a therapist, hence the beard, and every single piece of furniture in our house being a couch.

So five years into the work, I found myself working at a local mental health clinic supporting people who were survivors of the absolute worst things that people are capable of doing to other people.

And I started to notice another pattern.

They would make incredible progress, they'd level out and then eventually, usually in a relatively short period of time, backslide.

This happened over and over again - progress, which is so exciting to see, plateau, pretty normal, and then the backslide, which is always heartbreaking.

So I started to dig into the literature a little bit and read up on this thing that I discovered called treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder, which is actually a thing.

And coincidentally, so was burnout, which at this point in time had started to sink its nasty, insidious sharp claws deep into me.

Around this time, I found myself on our very own Lake Nockamixin in a kayak with a friend who's also a therapist.

I think we'd been out there for maybe an hour and a half, two hours.

And I have these clear memories of this experience, the sensory experience, the breeze coming right over my left shoulder.

I feel it rustling these little hairs on my neck.

And at that time, I probably hadn't got a haircut too frequently.

So they were nice and long.

And watching that breeze after feeling it brush past me, skate across the surface of the water and create little ripples.

And then that same breeze would continue up the opposite side of the bank and just start to move the canopy of the trees, like only a summer breeze can.

You all know what I'm talking about.

And in this instant, somewhere in this experience, a question kind of popped up into my mind.

Why aren't we doing this with our clients and our colleagues?

So I decided to look for an answer.

I dove back into the literature and you won't be surprised to know what I found.

There is an ever growing mountain of incredible research that clearly spells out the power that simply spending time in nature has on our entire beings - our physical selves, our emotional selves, our mental selves, our spiritual selves, our social selves and our creative selves.

Plus whatever else you feel like is a part of you can benefit by spending time outdoors.

So after finding this evidence, I decided to take the entrepreneurial trek into the wilderness and start a practice that's intended just to reconnect people with nature and in doing so, reconnect them with themselves and others.

Now, I've been familiar with the writings of Emmanuel Kant since college.

Because marine biology didn't work out, I was going to chemistry office hours all the time, and one incredibly astute and patient professor said, Connor, I don't think you want to study dolphins.

I think you want to be a dolphin.

Absolutely true.

Dr Falcone, wherever you are, I appreciate you.

So I changed majors, went to philosophy and art.

And had the pleasure of studying with a couple folks that were really familiar with Emmanuel Kant and his writings and at that time the idea of a categorical imperative was so appealing.

A simple rule, it's universal, absolute that guides every decision, I would make, right?

The metric that I would measure myself against others with, or I would measure myself and others with, and a compass to guide all my decisions.

But as time often does, the years have gone by and my perspective has shifted.

I'm fairly certain now that Emmanuel Kant, despite his powerful writings and powerful thought, missed something major.

He missed a bunch, for those of you that know his writings.

But one of the things he really missed and didn't account for is human nature.

He was far too focused on perfection of thought and action.

Inherent in and necessary to the natural world is flaw, flexibility, adaptability and growth.

We see this all the time in the natural world.

Healthy ecosystems are never, ever, ever static.

They're constantly shifting, changing, adjusting and striving to get back to and then maintain balance.

Perfection doesn't exist, but balance absolutely does.

Not too long ago, after this practice was up and running, I found myself falling into the same traps that a lot of us do over the course of our professional and personal lives.

I wasn't doing the things that I know are good and healthy for me.

I wasn't getting outside on my own.

I was doing it for clients, but not for myself.

I wasn't taking the long, rambling paddles that I love to take.

I wasn't going for runs.

I wasn't going for hikes.

I wasn't even going for walks.

I was languishing.

Simultaneously, I'd been given this fantastic opportunity to present to the conference and was trying to create a presentation that drew really clear, logical, research based links to our health as humans and the ecosystem around us.

For whatever reason, as often is the case, the two things collided and a spark lit.

I needed a way to assess my own personal ecosystem and more than that, I needed something to give me an idea of what was going OK and what maybe needed a little attention.

This is the moment that the concept of "thrive" was born.

Now, also something I think a lot of us can identify with, taking an idea and making it something useful is never a solo effort.

I was fortunate to find myself in the audience of the wonderful Dr Lisa Kessler, who is a scholar who researches, writes about and puts into action best practices for nurturing sustainable schools in the communities that comprise healthy, living, human and natural ecosystems.

So Thrive stands for thoughts, health, resilience, interdependence, vitality and empathy, as you can see on the handy dandy compass behind me and also on the card that you should have been given during intermission.

Each of the six facets listed on this compass are pretty interesting because they are both a concept that can be assessed and also an outcome that can be measurably improved by spending time outdoors in nature.

Each line on the compass contains a scale from one to ten, and it's designed for you to take just a moment, a breath or two and notice where you are right now.

For those of you that are numbers and data wonks, feel free to consider this a score that you can add up.

It can be a lot of fun.

However, I'd like you to think of this as being more akin to a waypoint on a map.

This is going to help you understand where you are, and it's just like what you would do if you were navigating through the physical wilderness.

Using a topographic map and a compass.

You pick a destination.

You set some references, typically using landmarks in the landscape around you.

You take a compass bearing and you start walking or paddling or whatever way, rollerblading, maybe, I don't know.

You're going to regularly stop to reassess your position.

If needed you reorient and then you continue on your route.

Simply following a bearing without checking your position regularly while you're in movement can lead to finding yourself off course and sometimes lost.

I don't think this is any different from when we're navigating our own beautiful, mysterious, sometimes very scary, ever-shifting internal landscapes.

There are two almost immediate benefits from taking a second to participate in this exercise.

The first is a mindfulness break, bringing your attention into the present, which we all know is very healthy, and we don't give ourselves enough opportunities to do this.

The second is a very quick snapshot of what's going well in your life and what facets could use a little bit of attention.

Or perhaps a little reorientation just to simply get you back on course.

So thoughts.

I'm sure everybody knows what thoughts are, but just to reiterate, a thought is the product and process of thinking.

It's whatever happens in your imagination, right?

Kind of mysterious, but we all sort of know what it is.

Take a moment and pay attention to what's happening inside of your mind right now, apart from mindblowing inspiration from all these talks you've heard this evening.

Are your thoughts scattered and distracted or clear and focused?

Simply looking at an image of nature on the wall of your office or your home, better yet looking out of a window at a landscape, best still is taking a walk in green space, has been shown by researchers far smarter than me to help us restore our attention and focus.

We all know what this word means too.

Health is a condition of being sound om body and mind and spirit, it's freedom from disease and pain.

In this day and age, we tend to chop ourselves up into teeny tiny bits when we consider our health.

But for the sake of this exercise, please think of your entire being.

No surprise, time spent in nature is associated with an incredible range of health and well-being benefits, including, but definitely not limited to the restoration of a healthy variable heart rate, reduction in stress hormones in our brain and bodies and lowered blood pressure.

Resilience.

Now, a lot of this was pulled from the literature in ecology, where ecologists study the health of an ecosystem and resilience and the one coming up next are two of the most important measures.

Resilience is loosely described as our ability to bounce back after experiencing a hardship.

We can adjust easily to misfortune and change.

Our ability to bounce back after experiencing a hardship or sudden change is directly and positively impacted by spending time in the natural world.

Now, I'm just going to say this, interdependence is one of my favorites, so forgive me if I gush a little bit on this one.

Interdependence is a state of being mutually dependent on others.

It's relying on others for support.

Take a moment, just a breath or two and consider, who do you rely on?

Are you getting their best?

And then consider who relies on you and are you giving them your best?

The way that we perceive of our connections with other people, the communities around us and the people that we rely on for support are positively impacted by spending time in nature.

Vitality.

Vitality is more than just health, it's this magical combination of confidence, capability, enthusiasm and vigor that you bring to the tasks at hand.

Take a second and think for a moment about how much vitality you've felt today.

Were you full of that positive capability or could it use a little attention?

You see where this is going, right?

OK. Our vigor and vitality are positively impacted, an increase in a very short time, spending time in the outdoors.

Last and most definitely not least, a theme that has been echoed in many of the talks you've heard tonight is empathy.

It's the capacity to feel, comprehend and consider the emotional experiences and perspectives of other people.

It plays an absolutely critical role in leadership in organizations and communities and schools and every walk of life.

You typically understand this as being something that's extended to others, and I want you to consider that when you mark your point on the compass.

But in the meantime, also please consider your own understanding of the emotional experience you are going through.

Are you able to extend the compassion that you regularly give to others, to yourself?

Spending time in nature, especially with other people, has been shown to directly increase our empathy for others and also for the natural world, which is critical in this day and age.

So a couple of the benefits that I have felt most valuable of some rigorous philosophical training in college are twofold.

The first is being able to think way, way, way too much about the most ridiculous and mundane stuff.

The second is also in being able to find out... Definitely not batting 400 at this.

This is maybe 50%.

When an argument that I'm involved in or listening to is flawed, illogical, or going in a direction that I hadn't anticipated.

This talk tonight, I was really excited to poke Emmanuel Kant's perfect categorical imperative squarely in the eye, but I think what's actually happened is I've come full circle and maybe landed myself in my own imperative.

Balance is imperative.

I need it, you need it, everybody around us who we love and even the people we don't love so much need it.

The natural world needs it to survive and ultimately thrive.

You and I as human beings have a lot more power than we think we have.

Life in this modern world, for whatever reason, seems to obscure our understanding of this fact, and we as communities of humans are both powerful and flawed.

Well, far from the perfection that Emmanuel Kant aspired us to be, nature requires us always to adjust and adapt, whether we know it or not, to achieve balance and continue to survive, keep on growing and thrive.

So whether it's the answers or the questions themselves that are eluding us in our quest to maintain this balance and to thrive, spending time in the outdoors is the answer.

Thank you.

- Thank you, Connor.

I think my favorite line from that one is "you don't want to study dolphins, "you want to be a dolphin."

How perfect is that?

But Lisa, the idea of get outside, it's been the only sort of salve, balm, that I've had throughout all of Covid time is to just put your mask on and go for a walk.

And it's astounding what a difference it makes mentally.

- Absolutely.

And even then, we realize we took for granted what it was like to do it without a mask.

- Right, right.

Right.

Or to have sort of every park available to you or every street available to you, to go outside.

It's the idea of thriving, thriving through nature.

It's just, it's so primitive and modern at the same time.

I just loved that talk.

That was great.

Becoming a speaker can feel like a huge process and an intimidating process, and I can personally say that it's not - it's an exciting process.

What's involved in becoming a speaker for TEDx Lehigh River?

- Well, George, you made it look really easy.

So it's a little more involved than perhaps it was for you for many.

And that's because we're not looking for people who are really practiced public speakers.

What we're looking for are people who have ideas that are going to change the way listeners think about the world or think about themselves.

And so identifying those folks is a challenge.

That's a challenge on the organization side.

We put out a call for speakers and in fact, our applications for speakers will be reopening very shortly, in fact, may even be open as of this broadcast.

And then folks, you know, write in and tell us what it is they want to talk about.

And kind of back to Jacob's idea, what are the things that we think of as unique, big ideas worth spreading, which is, of course, the TED mantra.

And it really has to do with not so much a brand new thing, but providing a way for the audience to think about something in a new way.

So, for example, you talked about skepticism.

That's not something you made up.

But what you brought to us was how to act on it in a way that perhaps we didn't understand before.

- Yeah.

- And that's a really good way to think about it.

So what are you going to share with us that's going to change our behavior, our thoughts and our actions.

- And if you go to TEDxLehighRiver.com...?

- Yes.

- The registration is pretty obvious on there.

You can sort of...

It may even be open.

And if it's not open, keep checking because we're always interested to have new speakers, new ideas.

The theme for March was Always/Never, Sometimes/Maybe.

How did you come about deciding that was going to be the theme and how did that relate to all of the talks that happened?

- Well, I started thinking about what it is as humans we're willing to make deals with ourselves about.

And so... And this is pretty much how the theme evolves each year.

We start to get some ideas about what people are talking about in the media, what's happening in our region.

And it just occurred to us that this was something we wanted to explore.

So putting the words out that said Always/Never, Sometimes/Maybe seemed to resonate with people and it elicited a number of applications.

In fact, I think we had more last year than we'd ever had, over 40, from which we gleaned seven or eight talks.

And so then in the process, we start to identify what are the ideas that are going to connect with some of the other ideas, so that we can thread them together with the theme.

And, you know, our ability to do that with Connor and Jacob and our next speaker that we're going to feature today, I think will become pretty clear as we watch.

- Yeah, that is the beauty of the process is connecting all these together.

Our final speaker is Dr Hasshan Batts.

He has a wonderful talk.

It's called A Radical Welcome Heals.

Check it out.

I was 11 years old the first time I saw someone murdered in front of me.

I was 11 years old when I found my grandmother dead on the kitchen floor.

I was afraid.

I felt alone and I was angry.

I was 11 years old when I was suspended from school.

I was 11 years old the first time I was arrested.

I wish someone would have asked me if I was OK.

I know what it feels like to be rejected, kicked out, suspended, expelled, asked to leave, divorced, locked up and placed in solitary confinement.

I was left back in kindergarten, left back again in the seventh grade.

I spent three years in the ninth grade and I was pushed out of high school after the 11th grade into prison.

I'm a prison survivor, a son, a father, a brother, a neighbor, a healer, a storyteller, and again, a prison survivor.

I'm a community epidemiologist and a community based participatory researcher.

And what that means is that I've learned to listen to people and encourage and support you in telling your own story rather than telling your story for you, rather than commodifying, publishing and benefiting off of creating solutions for people that can create solutions for themselves.

We live in a society where 3.5 million children are suspended every year, 2.4 million people are incarcerated and seven million people are under some form of criminal justice control at any given moment.

And over 50% of all marriages end in divorce.

Rejection, zero tolerance, retribution and violence are the imperatives of our time.

I encourage you to imagine a world where radical welcome, forgiveness, healing and restorative practices are our way.

A world in which we always look for the alternatives to the harshest punishments, a world in which we recognize that hurt people hurt people, and that surviving trauma impacts decision making, brain development.

And we create a community where people can show up as their best selves and always be present.

I worked in a juvenile justice facility with a young man named Karim.

He was a beautiful, brilliant and charismatic young man.

And Pennsylvania requires that any child that's sentence for a violent crime write a victim impact letter before being released.

Karim vehemently refused to write that letter, extending his stay for months and possibly years.

When I started working with Karim as his therapist, I asked him why.

Why the resistance, why the refusal to write the letter?

And Karim told me story after story of growing up in an abusive home, of living in a violent community where he had to fight bullies every day to get home safe.

And he said to me with tears in his eyes, ain't nobody write me no damn letter or care about me all the times that I was a victim.

And it made me research and realize that over 60% of violent offenders have been victims of crime.

Imagine a world where Karim and children like him were asked "how can I help?"

rather than rejected, kicked out, locked up or thrown away for expressing their pain?

Imagine if they were greeted with radical welcome.

Imagine if Karim was greeted with a radical welcome that affirmed his greatness, that affirmed that he belonged and that reminded him that he was connected to a community that loved him and believed in him and believed in his best self.

Radical welcome greets you with a radiating smile.

It takes the time to learn your name, and perhaps the most radical part, it forgives you and welcomes you back into the community when you do harm and don't show up as your best self.

I knew the first thing we had to do was implement a no eject, no reject policy at the facility, a policy that states you are more than the worst thing that you've ever done, a policy that states that we know that you will not always show up as your best self, but we will not vote you off the island, a policy that states that you are greater than your bad days.

My colleagues and I intentionally created a space where accountability and judgment could coexist.

A space where Karim and youth like him could they share their pain and their experiences and at times act out and not be othered or voted off the island.

What we learned is that lessons like compassion, respect, forgiveness and empathy are not taught, they're modeled.

Modeled through radical welcome that creates connectivity and safety and a sense of belonging.

And we know that when people feel welcomed, they show up different.

When I was at my worst, Mama Batts would lean down and whisper in my ear, baby, when you decide to put half of the energy you put into doing wrong into doing the right thing, you're going to change the world.

When I was at my worst and I got a little bigger, she would reach up to me and say, boy, when you decide to put half of the energy you put into doing the wrong thing into doing the right thing, you're going to change the world.

Everyone needs a Mama Batts in their life that will see past our errors, see greatness in us and tell us our true story.

But Mama Batts wasn't enough to keep me safe because I was born into a world that hated me and rejected me.

And naturally it taught me to hate myself.

When our children attend schools with police officers instead of counselors, when they're followed around stores, suspended, judged, and further rejected for expressing their pain, they will find welcome and belonging in other ways, often through gangs and crime and promiscuity and drugs.

Tupac Shakur spoke for a whole generation of rejected urban youth when he said, I hung around the thugs, and even though they sold drugs, they showed a young brother love.

Even with a mother that stepped in when the rest of the world stepped out, I went astray, because we need a radical welcome that extends beyond that one caring adult that every child deserves.

We need a community that internalizes and epitomizes that we all belong.

We need a community where our worth and greatness are constantly being affirmed the moment we walk in the door to the moment that we leave.

I recently spent two weeks in Senegal and learned firsthand about what's called Senegalese Teranga.

Teranga is a Wolof word that means extreme hospitality.

There's no English equivalent because it's not here.

It's here.

Is the way you get off a plane and people embrace you like you've known them your whole life, and they smile and they tell you "welcome home" upon finding out that you're an African-American.

You know how we walk down the street facing our phone and ask someone, how are you?

And we really don't care?

We don't want to hear about their grocery list.

We don't want to hear about their sciatica.

And we definitely don't want to hear about their hemorrhoids.

Well, in Senegal, teranga felt like a genuine interest and concern for my well-being.

It felt like a sense of belonging when constantly welcomed with a smile, a warm embrace, invited to share a large meal out of a bowl with strangers.

Senegalese teranga didn't appear overnight.

It was developed during times of colonialism and post colonialism to fight the racism of the French.

It was developed because the Senegalese, they knew that difference had the power to other us and they knew that all the ethnic groups that were dealing with the oppression and white supremacy during that time from the French would split, and it would develop a hatred among them if they didn't begin to work together during the 15th and 20th centuries.

The collective trauma of the Black Holocaust in Africa empower the groups to join and to learn to create an identity that was centered around welcome.

So that difference did not set them apart.

It is so ingrained and institutionalized in Senegal that their soccer team is called the Lions of Teranga.

Leaders across Senegal knew this, and to this day they stay committed to it and you can feel it in everywhere you go and everything they do because they epitomize a radical welcome.

And they showed me what it feels like to experience the three questions that are at the heart of it.

How are you?

Are you safe?

Are you OK?

I couldn't help but think about feelings of rejection I had experienced as a child and witnessed in the countless youth and adults like Karim in the detention centers, mental health facilities and programs and community settings in which I worked and resided.

And I wondered, what would our lives have been like had we been greeted with a radical welcome?

Let me share a story of what a radical welcome looks like in practice.

Jose is a community college student that I learned about from his business professor while he was finishing a 14 year prison sentence for drug possession.

His professor would call me every week and tell me about Jose's progress, about is 3.9, and that he wanted him to come to our agency when he returned home because we were the only ones that he felt would greet him and accept him the way that he needed to be accepted because he had spent half his life incarcerated and decades as a veteran gang member.

The day Jose was released, his professor put him in the car and personally drove him to the center where he was greeted with what?

A radical welcome.

He was greeted with that smile.

He has been back every day since.

He tutors youth, he walks youth home that are being bullied.

He finishes his homework.

He's a leader in our community because he's found a place where he can return.

He's found a way that he can help the children and families in our community.

And if you ask Jose what did he find?

He'd say he found a home.

He'd tell you it's kind of like an episode of Cheers when Norm walks into the bar and everyone says, "Norm!"

Imagine had Jose found radical in school.

Imagine had he been greeted with a smile and encouragement rather than being told he'd never amount to anything, that he'd die in a pool of his own blood in junior high school.

The people, the places and the ways in which we show up, they stick with us, and we often live up to the expectations of those that we encounter.

Imagine how our youth and the most vulnerable among us would show up if we entered school, the library and the mall, and we were treated like we belong.

Like people were excited to see us, like we had a place and we were part of something larger than ourselves.

Radical welcome heals, it warms and it inspires us to be our best.

It increases accountability and it reminds us that we are bigger than something than just ourselves.

Imagine a world in which we practice radical welcome rather than reinforcing the behaviors that lead to criminal activity in a search for belonging.

Imagine a world where the police aren't being called on a neighbor for playing their music too loud.

When someone needs a bathroom and can't afford to buy a cup of coffee and the police aren't being called, or a young black man with a hoodie on can eat a pack of Skittles in peace, because he belonged.

I work with an organization called the Promise Neighborhoods of the Lehigh Valley, and we're primarily led by volunteers that are formerly incarcerated, criminal justice involved or have been impacted by the prison industrial complex.

And what we learned in our work, on our quest to help youth get from cradle to career, is that safe and stable communities are critical to successful educational and life outcomes.

We learned by surveying thousands of our community members, key stakeholder interviews and focus groups with 120 of our neighbors that safety is of primary concern, regardless of race, age, socioeconomic level or zip code.

And our theory was that by practicing radical welcome, by creating an environment that fosters a sense of belonging, we could decrease violence and increase the sense of belonging and perceptions on safety.

Let me tell you what we learned from the 120 families that we did focus groups with.

We learned that smiles matter, that names matter and that greetings matter.

We learned that people feel most welcome in places with friends and family, in doctors and dentists offices, in church and in bodegas.

We learned that when people feel welcome, they show up different.

My research and work with vulnerable and oppressed communities has taught me that there are three critical questions that all of our neighbors in crisis often wish someone would ask.

These three questions reinforce radical welcome.

These three critical, caring and compassionate questions sound kind of simple.

And they are.

It begins again with a smile - not a regular smile, but an uncomfortably large smile, and by learning someone's name, it includes active listening, commenting on what's important to the people that we encounter and the places that we show up every day.

And it's how you treat people like Karim, Jose and me when we don't show up as our best selves.

It's how we define our neighbors that have made mistakes.

I again invite you to imagine what would it look like every day to show up in the places that you show up every day with a radical welcome in all that you do.

Imagine a world where every child, every struggling adult, every neighbor and recovery has someone that believes in them, sees the best of them and asks, are you OK?

Are you safe?

How can I help?

Are you OK?

Are you safe?

How can I help?

Are you OK?

Are you safe?

How can I help?

Rejection, zero tolerance and retribution are the imperatives of our time.

I propose we reimagine a world centered in radical welcome, healing, forgiveness, restorative practices.

A world in which mistakes can be made, a world in which mistakes are forgiven and allowed to be made.

- Are you OK?

Are you safe?

How can I help?

Such a simple and wonderful approach to just use in everyday life with all the people that are important to you or people that you want to be important to you.

It's such a timely talk too.

It's such a caring and timely, wonderful talk.

I was fortunate enough to have Dr Batts be part of our TEDx Lehigh River Virtual series, which we're doing over there on Facebook, about once a month or so.

And boy, what a wonderful human, what a just inspiring story.

His whole presence and essence is just inspiring and wonderful.

- And every day that he goes to work, our world gets better.

- Yes.

Yeah.

It's like, you hope that about what you do, that you provide something a little bit better for the world.

But he's literally doing that and it's just inspiring and wonderful and just the sweetest person, too, which is so great.

What is next for TEDx Lehigh River?

- Well, we are ramping up for producing our next main event.

This year's theme will be 20/20 Vision - clarity through hindsight and insight.

So we are hoping to gather a number of speakers who... Of course, hindsight is always 20/20.

But to be able to talk about the insight that we have gained as a result of this year that is unparalleled is a very exciting prospect for us.

So that will be mounting sort of through the spring.

Applications will be open, we'll start that process to probably put something in front of our TEDx Lehigh River community late spring, early summer.

And we're hoping that perhaps we might be able to have an in-person audience by then or perhaps do it outside.

- Here's hoping.

Here's hoping.

And the thing about that, the theme is called 20/20 - don't let that necessarily think that you can't bring your idea because it has nothing to do with that.

The beauty of what TEDx Lehigh River specifically does is that it can incorporate your idea into our theme.

So if you have an idea worth sharing, please go to TEDxLehighRiver.com, see if the application process is open, give us your idea and we can hopefully have you become a speaker.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

We hope you've enjoyed just this taste of what TEDx Lehigh River is all about.

Thanks to our three speakers.

Thanks to Lisa, thanks to PBS39 as well.

And be safe, everybody.

We'll see you soon.

We'll see you soon.