Transcript

"From Stock Cars to ""Rock"" Stars: The Impact Of All You Do | Dr. Aaron Johnson | TEDxColoradoSprings"

I used to be a stock car mechanic I was crew chief for a team that had five drivers and more than 30 mechanics and support personnel that kept five cars on the track we were good we won 13 championships had two rookies of the year three mechanic of the Year awards three of our members went on to work at the highest levels of NASCAR racing was life up every morning at 5:30 to my day job by 7:00 work until 5:30 then come home wolf down supper go to the race shop and work until the work was done nine o'clock ten o'clock midnight 1:00 a.m. get up the next morning and do it all again seven days a week 52 weeks a year racing gave me purpose I had a passion racing was what I was born to do on July 22nd 1994 my driver was killed in a racing accident at a short track in southern Missouri and just like that where once there had been passion and purpose now there was a big empty space I was lost so I did what many of us do I went to school to get readmitted to the University I had a meeting on campus it was February there was a foot of snow on the ground and I drove a Mustang GT mustang gts and snow don't mix so I got in touch with my brother and asked if he'd give me a lift in the four-wheel drive he was going to school at the same University on our way in that morning he asked what I was going to do while I waited for my meeting I told him I didn't know I thought maybe I'd go to the Union and shoot pool or play some video games he said you know you should sit in on this class I'm taking I think you'd like it it was a geology class for 50 minutes I was transfixed I had no idea that I would also be transformed I left that day with a major field of study and the class schedule I studied geology I became a geologist now many of you have a mental image of geologists you think of ruggedly handsome men maybe you think of strong intelligent beautiful women or maybe you think of socially awkward misfits when I tell people I'm a geologist they usually respond in one of three ways the first occasionally spoken with a grimace is so you look for oil the second reflects some kind of misunderstanding may be confusing geology with some other G science once when I told a person I was a geologist they said it must be fascinating to work with the elderly I am NOT a gerontologist the third group though they get it right they say you look at rocks we do we study rocks intensively I have an almost pathological obsession with rocks you see every process that happens on earth leaves behind evidence rocks record those traces we geologists study rocks because they help us tell the story of Earth's past geology at its core is a forensic science no one was here there were no eyewitnesses no one saw the Rockies rise from the plains we look at the rocks and garden of the gods those rocks record the first steps in the formation of the Rockies no one saw the first dinosaurs we study Raptor fossils from Argentina no one saw the San Juan volcanoes explode in an eruption six times larger than Mount st. Helens we study the rocks at kocha Topa Dome for ten years I study geology along the way I learned some truly marvelous things I learned that three and a half billion years ago earth was a brown planet our oceans filled with iron cyanobacteria you and I probably learned about them as blue-green algae they started to take carbon dioxide and water in they used sunlight they made organic matter in oxygen the oxygen removed the iron from the oceans earth became the blue planet I learned that 600 million years ago the first animals began to swim in the oceans predators pursued prey food webs formed earth fundamentally changed I learned that 400 million years ago amphibians plants and reptiles colonized the land surface where once there had only been lichens and fungi now there were complex ecosystems earth fundamentally changed I learned that 250 million years ago a large volcanic eruption in Siberia burned billions of tons of coal Earth's climate changed so completely that nearly every species on the planet became extinct earth was this close to being sterilized of life I learned all of these things by looking at the traces in the rocks or by looking at traces other geologists had discovered and described still there was a sense of loss a worry that I might never reclaim that same sense of purpose and feel the same passion I'd felt when we were racing I became a college professor and in 2011 I was teaching a field camp for the University of Missouri at their field school near Lander Wyoming we were taking the students on the Paleozoic reconnaissance what the students called the Paleozoic Death March now they called it that because we hiked 12 miles and gained and lost 11,000 feet of elevation in a day we were looking at paleozoic rocks rocks between 550 million and 250 million years old we were teaching the students to read the stories recorded in the rocks one stop we looked at a unit called the Grove ant formation it was filled with worm burrows the sediments were thoroughly and exquisitely disturbed these rocks recorded the daily lives of worms we taught the students to use these clues and others to envision to understand what earth had looked like in this spot 500 million years before an ancient sea where today the rocks of the Wind River Range rise ten thousand feet into the sky back at camp that night I collapsed into my bunk I was just drifting off to sleep when it hit me like a thunderclap i sat up in bed and I said we're the worms we are not worms but we're like the worms see the worms were going about their daily lives they were doing what worms do they were leaving a trace and everything that we do as we go about our daily lives leaves a trace maybe 500 million years from now someone or something will come along and they will see the traces we've left recorded in the rocks and they'll use the traces of our lives to understand our world like the worms we're mostly unaware of the traces we leave I thought a lot about this idea that we leave a trace and I began to feel that sense of purpose again that passion it helped me to understand some of the things I've experienced in my life when Raimi died he was my driver a thousand people came to his funeral in our little town of six hundred we got cards and letters from 31 states Texas Tennessee Michigan Colorado I realized all of those people had felt compelled to share in our grief because of the trace we left behind because of the impact we had on their lives I thought about my brothers his invitation to sit in on that college class and how that simple act completely altered the trajectory of the rest of my life I began to realize that we leave a trace not just on earth physically but on each other the more I considered this idea the more I realized that everything we do leaves a trace even the simplest action when I lace up my boots in the morning I leave a trace if I leave that trace on the new carpet I get a gentle reminder to put my shoes on in the entryway everything you do leaves a trace when you walk through the snow you leave footprints those footprints may only last for a couple of days but for a few days evidence of your existence persists for a few days you leave a mark on the world a couple of years ago I reconnected with a guy that I worked with at a factory in Missouri as we talked he told me that he'd named his son after me I was speechless and anyone who knows me and there are a few in the audience will tell you that my being speechless is an extraordinarily unusual occurrence I just couldn't see why I'm not special so I asked why why did you name your son after me he said he'd come into work one day and that I could tell something was on his mind so I asked him if everything was okay he just spilled it he found out the night before his girlfriend was expecting he was young and he wasn't ready to be a dad we talked we talked about our families about support systems about our parents and our grandparents and our siblings and all the people that could help our close friends even the guys at work I told him I'd help if I could as he and his girlfriend went through the pregnancy and they experienced all of those things that parents to be experienced he knew he could come and talk to me if things got weird or scary or funny that I'd always shoot him straight and when his son was born he was mostly ready he said that was in large part because of the conversations we'd had I didn't know you see I left the factory a few weeks before his son was born I was a new college student he was a new parent it was a hundred miles from the factory to the University this was before cell phones and text messages in social media we drifted apart it was 11 years before I became aware of the trace that I'd left of the impact that I'd had on his life I came to realize that we're like the worms because we mostly aren't aware and it can be days weeks months or years before we become aware if we ever do we're different from the worms and a fundamental and very important way though the worms were doing what worms do they were burrowing through sediment eating it using the nutrients they found to make a living the amphibians the plants the reptiles were doing what amphibians plants and reptiles have to do to survive the dinosaurs were doing dinosaur things probably really spectacular things but they were just being dinosaurs they had no way to know that millions of years later this soft fuzzy creature with a big bulbous head and forward-facing eyes would be looking at traces of their lives in the rocks and using those traces to understand the world we humans while we're not usually aware of the traces we leave we can be we can be and that makes us unique in Earth's history we're the only species ever to exist that has the capacity to be aware of the traces we're capable of leaving more than that not only can we be aware we have a choice we can choose the actions we take we can choose to be aware of the traces we leave we can choose to pursue actions that create positive change we get to make that choice and as we make that choice hopefully we choose to try to understand the traces we leave behind today we set out to share our stories and our experiences to leave a trace intentionally we chose to walk this path with you in the hopes that our stories and our experiences would inspire others to use their stories and their experiences to help us build a better world it's a powerful feeling when you realize that every action you take has the potential not just to change earth physically but to change a person or a group of people or maybe change the fabric of society today you've heard lots of big ideas lots of things that you might use or that you might be inspired to use to make a change the choice of actions to take the choice of impacts to make the choice of traces to leave those choices are yours [Applause] you