37 minutes ago
Jo Fidgen et Laura Thomas,
BBC Serie Outlook *
John Francis, yesterday and today.
American John Francis, a young hippie, made a decision that changed his life: to stop talking. He was silent for 17 years before realizing he had something to say.
It all started with a disaster. A collision between two oil tankers in 1971 that polluted San Francisco Bay with more than half a million gallons of crude oil.
“I heard about it and wanted to see it, so I drove all the way to San Francisco from my small town of Inverness. I saw people on the beach in small groups cleaning up. They were going in the water and came out with seabirds – pelicans, gulls and cormorants – covered in oil.”
Seeing the birds and the people trying to save them had such an impact on him that he felt he had to do something.
“I told myself that I didn’t want to drive cars anymore.” It was during the hippie days and I was definitely a bit of a hippie, and I decided that was what I was going to do.”
Remember, this was the 70s in California. Everyone was driving everywhere, so ditching motorized vehicles altogether was a bold move.
John found himself walking alone.
“I thought everyone would walk with me, because the oil spill had such a strong impact on people that they were saying things like ‘I’m going to stop driving’. So it really wasn’t unusual for me. to say that.
“However, when I complied, they said to me, ‘why are you doing this? It’s crazy! Nothing is going to change.”
“But, as my mother used to tell me, I’m stubborn, and I kept walking.”
“While I was doing it, something started to happen. I started enjoying it. I started enjoying living where I was living and not having to drive my car into town or do shopping at stores…..I became part of where I lived.”
Met
Photo credit, Getty Images
It was the time of the hippies…
Gradually, John noticed that instead of shrinking his world by staying so local, it was expanding.
“Isn’t it amazing! As I was moving very fast before, I had very little time to notice what was around me; getting out of the car was an opportunity for me to discover my surroundings at a fast pace. human.”
But his decision sparked controversy.
“People were arguing with me about whether one person could make a difference.
Drivers would blame him for making them feel bad or wanting them to feel bad, and John would hit back – until he grew tired of the sound of his own voice.
A gift
The day before his 27th birthday, John was reading JRRR Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and had an idea.
Photo credit, Getty Images
“Those who have read it know that when hobbits have a birthday, they don’t expect presents, they give them.”
Being a big talker, he thought about what his gift to others could be: “that day, I will stop talking.”
“So I got up that morning and was quiet.”
There are so many exchanges in a normal day….. How did you manage not to speak?
“It was very interesting, because people had a lot to say and, to their surprise and delight, I just listened to them.”
“For me, it was eye-opening because I listened to what people had to say, maybe for the first time.”
“What I was doing until the day they started talking to me was thinking about what I was going to say to them, how to tell them they were wrong and I was right.”
“During this 24-hour vow of silence, I realized that I hadn’t listened to anyone, and now that I was listening, maybe I could learn something.”
Photo credit, Getty Images
17 years of silence and…
And what did your friends say: did they encourage you or discourage you?
“At first my girlfriend was very happy, but after about a week she wanted to know when I was going to quit. And a lot of other people thought I was a little crazy…I was wondering me -even if I was.
So why didn’t he speak?
“I felt good because I realized that I was learning. And when I walked in nature, I felt that it was really a place that I had to explore. It was something that I had to do. ”
“For the first few weeks there were a lot of conversations in my mind about what to say and when I was going to start speaking, until I finally came to the conclusion that I was going to continue for a year. .”
“And once I made the decision, everything relaxed and I settled into silence, and silence settled over me.”
It’s a beautiful phrase: “silence settled over me”. What does it do ?
“Oh, that’s wonderful! It’s almost like I was chosen to be that person and I was so grateful for that. And it’s like a gift. I started out thinking I was giving a gift. to my community and it ended up being a gift for me too”.
One year to the east
John had given himself a year without speaking and had set out to cross the United States on foot.
Photo credit, Getty Images
…22 years of walking.
He had his sleeping bag on his back and camped out under the stars, taking up casual jobs along the way.
He improvised sign language and used a lot of mimes to make himself understood. Later, when journalists started writing about him, he cut out the articles that served as his cover letter.
Besides walking, John paints and plays the banjo, which is his constant companion.
When his next birthday arrived, he reassessed his decision and remained silent for another year…and another, and another…
Seventeen years passed, during which he did “a lot of exploring, hiking from California to Oregon and into wilderness areas”.
He also went back to education, to get a degree, quietly.
“I remember going to the registrar’s office (at Southern Oregon University in Ashland) and trying to make it clear to him that I didn’t speak and that I wanted to study,” he explains.
“I sat across from him and bowed my head like Rodin’s ‘Thinker’, then brought my palms together and opened them like a book and pretended to read it.”
Photo credit, Getty Images
With the help of Rodin.
John repeated the sequence until the clerk said, “So you want to go to school here and learn to think?”
close the circle
He earned a bachelor’s degree, then contacted the University of Montana to apply for a place in their master’s program in environmental studies.
“I can do this in two years,” he writes, and he starts walking.
When he arrived, he had no money.
“The program director said to me, ‘John, are you ready to study?’ I emptied my pockets and he said to me: ‘ah, you have no money!’ I shook my head and he said, ‘come back tomorrow’.”
The next day, “he gave me $150 and said, ‘sign up for credit,’ which I did. And he said, ‘all the teachers said they’d let you follow their lessons for free.
Photo credit, Getty Images
The detonator is a disaster (volunteers clean a duck in California, victim of the January 1971 accident which spilled 800,000 gallons of oil).
He obtained his master’s degree with the thesis “Pilgrimage and change: war, peace and environment” (1986).
“These things became the epitome of my thinking as I completed my walk across the United States.
Along the way, he completed a doctorate in land resources at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
His thesis was on the very thing that had precipitated his silent march: oil spills.
The message
The doors started to open.
He was asked to advise the US government on oil spills and he wrote regulations for them. The United Nations wanted him as an environmental ambassador… Not bad for a hippie who once decided to give up motorized vehicles and then stopped talking!
Three titles and almost two decades later, John felt he had something to say and put a date in the diary to start talking again: January 2, 1990.
John Francis playing his banjo at the start of his TED talk.
“I chose Earth Day, because I wanted to talk about the environment, something that for me had moved on from what we traditionally think of – climate change, oil spills, pollution and things like that – to include how we treat each other.
“It’s something I didn’t hear in my studies, but it’s what I learned walking around and being around people all over the country.
What link have you discovered between concern for the environment and concern for others?
“The connection was that since we are part of the environment, the way we treat each other is our first opportunity to treat the environment in a sustainable way or even to discover or understand what we mean by sustainability. .
“For me, the environment has become human rights, civil rights, gender equality and all the ways we relate to each other because it manifests in the physical environment around us. .
“Think for example of how we pollute the water without thinking of the people downstream who have to clean it up.”
In other words, if we exploit each other, we are more likely to exploit the environment, and if we exploit the environment, we are more likely to exploit each other.
John Francis wrote a memoir called “Planet Walker”.
That’s the message John wanted so badly to get across that he was ready to break his 17-year silence.
Your voice
How was it to speak again for the first time in so long and in front of an audience including friends and family members you haven’t spoken to in so many years?
“I did it in Washington DC, at a hotel that offered to host a small event for me, and I invited some of my friends and family. Some media also came – National Geographic, Los Angeles Times.
“I played a little banjo and said, ‘thanks for being here.’ My mom jumped up from her chair and said, ‘Hallelujah, Johnny is talking!’ And I thought, ‘What an incredible thing, to see my mother so happy’.”
“But since I hadn’t heard my voice for so long, I couldn’t quite understand where it was coming from. I looked behind me to see who was saying what I was thinking.
“I was so surprised that I started laughing and saw my dad looking at me and thinking, ‘yes, he’s really crazy’.”
And that’s how the words came back into his life. …. And the cars?
“I was walking everywhere, no matter what, and I realized that I had become a prisoner and I had the keys to this prison, and I could free myself from it at any time.”
“Now I drive a hybrid car.”
Do you miss the time when you didn’t talk and just walked?
“Well, I’m still walking. In fact, since August, I’ve been going to walk in Africa. And also sometimes I don’t speak for a day. Anyway, these 17 years of silence and these 22 years of walking don’t fade away”.
Would you advise others to do so?
“I would advise listening to each other.”