Privilege of Choice (Part 1 of 2): Silent Path of Dr. Francis

What if you chose to remain silent for 17 years? Join us on "It's a Privilege" as we explore the remarkable life of Dr. John Francis, the Planet Walker, who did exactly that. Along with our co-hosts, Dr. Seria Chatters and Brandon Rhodes, we uncover how Dr. Francis's extraordinary decisions to forgo speaking and motorized transportation for decades transformed his understanding of privilege, choice, and the human experience. Dr. Chatters offers her unique insights as someone navigating life with legal blindness, while Brandon discusses the unequal distribution of choices based on resources and circumstances.

We'll also discuss the profound influence parents have on the lives of their children, bringing you a heartfelt story of a mother from Trinidad whose relentless efforts aimed to widen the horizons for her kids. We grapple with the disappointment that can arise when opportunities are not seized, weighed down by factors like mental health and addiction. Through an intriguing analogy of a chess game between a husband and wife, we delve into the ways upbringing and urgency shape our decision-making processes, providing a fresh lens to view the decisions we make daily.

Lastly, immerse yourself in Dr. Francis's transformative journey as he walks 20 miles to a concert in honor of a friend, a journey that led him to embrace a lifestyle of walking and silence. From spiritual encounters in the Redwoods to silent academic achievements, Dr. Francis's path is a testament to the power of human kindness and environmental stewardship. Thank you for listening and reflecting with us—it truly is a privilege.

Connect with Dr. John Francis, the PlanetWalker at https://planetwalk.org/

For more information about the host, go to www.thejasonbrowne.com
Check out the TEDx talk here: TEDx Possibilities of Privilege
Thanks you for being a part of the conversation.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jason Browne: Welcome to it's a privilege podcast, where we explore the possibilities of our privilege. This is part one of the privilege of choice on today's episode. Our special guest is Dr. John Francis, the planet Walker. He chose to be silent for 17 years and chose not to ride a motorized vehicle for 22 years.

Why I guess you're going to have to stick around and find out. I also have the privilege of having two wonderful co hosts, Dr. Saria chatters. I also have the privilege of having two wonderful co hosts, Dr. Seria Chatters, a TEDx speaker and mental health and wellness expert, and Brandon Rhodes, a gamer, improviser, and DEI director of Happy Valley Improv.

What can you expect? First, our crew is going to First, what can you expect? First, what can you expect? First, our crew is going to chat First, our crew is going to chat and explore the privilege of choice. What can you, what can you, what can you expect this episode? First, our crew is going to chat and explore the privilege of choice.

And then, we'll get into the privilege perspective with Dr. Francis and hear a story about how the cho And here a story and hear a story about how choice has impacted his life to get started. Let's check in on our own privilege.

Welcome to it's a privilege where we explore various possibilities of our own privilege today's episode. We have Dr. John Francis, he's known as the planet Walker. He's walked across the United States. On foot.

He was willingly silent for 17 years and took no transportation for 22 years. And he's going to help us explore the possibilities of privilege as it relates to choice. 

[00:00:52] Jason Browne: And he's going to help us explore the theme of choice as always, we're going to have a few parts to this episode. First, we're just going to chop it up and chat about the idea of choice with our co hosts. Then we're going to hop into the privileged perspective where we have a story from Dr. John Francis. And then last but not least, we're going to hop into the Q A and P questions, answers, and privilege to dig even deeper into the topic. 

It's a privilege. It's a privilege. It is a privilege to be your host. My name is Jason Browne and I have the privilege of having two wonderful co hosts, Dr. Sierra chatters and my man, Brandon Rhodes. How y'all doing? 

[00:00:52] Dr. Chatters: Doing well. 

[00:00:52] Jason Browne: All right. Brandon, how you feeling? I'm feeling, feeling 

[00:00:52] Brandon Rhodes: really good. 

[00:00:52] Jason Browne: Good. Good. Uh, so we start off.

Seria, Dr. Seria Chatters and Brandon Rhodes. How y'all feeling today? 

[00:00:57] Dr. Chatters: Fabulous. 

[00:00:58] Jason Browne: I'm doing really good. Good. We start off every episode in the same way. Every day might be different, but what, what is, but what is one privilege that you're feeling today? 

[00:01:07] Dr. Chatters: Oh, wow. That's a really good question. I am feeling the privilege of being able to live in climate controlled spaces. 

[00:01:15] Jason Browne: Air conditioning goes a long way. It's lovely. 

[00:01:18] Brandon Rhodes: Um, Uh, my privilege, I love, um, I, I, I feel privileged, uh, to be in spaces where I can be creative. 

[00:01:26] Jason Browne: What does that mean? What do you mean? 

Where do you get a chance to be creative? 

[00:01:27] Brandon Rhodes: I'm an improviser. I, uh, I like to do improv and I've started, uh, creating my own type of improv and, uh, directing improv.

And I feel so privileged to be in a space where I can share my opinions on, on certain things and people. Um, rely on that. They, they respect my opinion. So that's a pretty interesting choice you made to happen to improv, which is of course, our topic of today. So before we happen to getting into the stories, yeah, I know, before we happen to the stories, before we happen to the privileged perspective in the QAP, let's just, let's just talk about this idea of choice, this privilege of choice. Uh, so I want to get your opinions and thoughts on this. On what that means to you, it could be about the choices that we make every day, whether we have them or whether we don't, whether society acts, uh, asks us to make certain choices.

So what are your perspectives on choice as it relates to you? And maybe a little bit about privilege. 

[00:02:11] Dr. Chatters: Wow. That that's, that's a really good and hefty question with many layers. So when, when I hear about the topic of choice, I. I feel that sometimes if people understood the privilege of choice, that they may feel more in control in life than they probably typically feel on a day to day basis, because they may not really recognize how some of the choices they have are not necessarily choices that others.

there are choices that I have been able to make as an individual who is Legally blind, but not blind. That, makes it to where there are privileges that I have, for example, that a person who is blind and needs a cane and depends on a cane, they don't get to walk into an interview room, for example, without a very obvious statement.

Of otherness that I have a cane and I'm supposed to use it, but I don't I can, travel spaces without it. So 

[00:03:09] Jason Browne: hopefully your doctor's not listening. 

[00:03:11] Dr. Chatters: Right. Um, so, but you know, I, when I think about choice, I you know, it's interesting because um, the field that I'm in now um, in higher education was pro would probably not have necessarily been my choice.

And I ended up in it because actually my, my, 

[00:03:29] Jason Browne: Um, and 

[00:03:29] Dr. Chatters: so that's kind of what when I when I hear about choice, because I, I, kind of take it back to you know, for example, uh, uh, my undergrad degree is in business administration marketing. And when I graduated and I was looking for jobs, a lot of people get into the marketing field through sales, right? Um but what sales often requires is they say, you must have a car. Must have a driver's license, right?

And when I would try to apply for jobs because I'm not able to drive that immediately took me out of being able to do a lot of those jobs. Interesting. And even though I would have chosen to go into that space, which is what I really wanted to do my inability to be able to do one of the basic things that These now and nowadays, right?

That's actually a really different because you could do sales from your home, 

[00:04:15] Jason Browne: right? 

[00:04:16] Dr. Chatters: But not at the time that I got, so then I decided I was like I need to find a field that I actually can do as a person with a disability. So there's things that I could have continued to try to move in that direction and, you know, continuously have doors slammed in my face because there's not really, there was not a way for me to wish away.

That, but am I excited about where I am now? Yes I, this is not a woe is me story, but what I'm just saying is that some of us, I think our paths are sometimes chosen for us. Um, we're very lucky and privileged if we fall into something that we love. Right. But, um, so that's really what kind of came to mind with me of choice.

So I think I always try to remind people, you know, that the fact that you can get up every morning, um, and you can go jump in your car and you can go where you want to go. The fact that you can be alone. In your car, um, going where you want to go instead of having 14 

[00:04:55] Jason Browne: kids or 

[00:04:56] Dr. Chatters: The fact that someone's always having to drive you somewhere.

You're never alone. Solitude and driving, being able to play music, 

[00:05:06] Jason Browne: Drive 

[00:05:06] Dr. Chatters: by yourself, being alone, the privilege in that some people will never have that privilege. 

[00:05:12] Jason Browne: Gotcha. Brandon, what's your opinion? What's your thoughts on choice? 

[00:05:15] Brandon Rhodes: Just,  thinking about what you said, um, I got to think about the privilege in regards to the amount of choices that you have in any given situation.

Like you might have a choice, but like you said, some of those choices might some of those options might go away because of the amount of privilege you have or have not. So I think that's very interesting to think about. Just the choice being there, but the options not being there.

[00:05:35] Dr. Chatters: Absolutely. 

[00:05:36] Jason Browne: Yeah. And I would have to agree with that. That's one of the, that's one of the hard parts when, people make choices, when people make decisions, it's often from my experience it's not recognized like it's, you have something that a lot of people can't do. You can choose. Yes. Or no, I can choose to sit and create this podcast or not create this podcast. Some people don't have the option to do that because of resources, because of uh, because of the, the way their life went for the moment. Maybe, Maybe, they're living through a natural disaster, disaster. Any one of many things can limit the amount of choices one has and the simple ability to make the choices that we do every single day, carry a bit more weight when we hyper focus on the fact of like, I'm choosing to do this.

I take it for granted every day, but I'm choosing to do this. And what happens as a result of it? How do I tackle this and take it and appreciate it to me? That's a space that we hopefully will dive more into as we continue talking. Yeah. So, Dr chatter since there is this accessibility piece before we happen to the video.

What else is there anything else about? Choice that you want to bring up. 

[00:06:20] Dr. Chatters: Yeah I think, I think, that the, when you have limited choices, I think that one of the things that this conversation has really brought to light for me is potentially my choice in career path has been heavily weighted in trying to fight for people to have more choices.

Because I think that sometimes unfortunately in a world in which There are let's just say levels of discrimination that exist, right? And that means that some people, because of their perceived identity, their choices could be limited, right? Before they even have opened their mouth.

And I think that's one of the things that I've always. I really have a, I want my children to have more choices. I want, and when I was in the school district, I considered all the children in the school district, my children. And I wanted them to have more choices. So I think, what was 

[00:07:20] Jason Browne: your role in the school district?

[00:07:21] Dr. Chatters: Oh, I was a director of equity. So I was the first director of equity here in state college area. And I think one of the other important parts about that is I was the only director of equity in central Pennsylvania. So I supported the work of most of the central Pennsylvania school districts as well.

So I think that, I hadn't thought about that until this conversation that I, you know, my mom is from Trinidad. Um, so my, I'm one of the first in my family on that. Born here in the United States. And I know that my mom's, my grandmother moved to the United States and brought my mom because my grandmother always said she wanted her kids to have more choices, right?

And then, so our entire life being brought up in a household with a father that was in the military. And then my mom was from My mom always talked about how she came here. She worked in the fields picking oranges and picking fruit and she at as a teenager had 4 to 5 jobs and she said that she would, um, go to school and because she did not have time to do her homework because she got off of school and she got on the bus.

To go to the field to work, she said she would be doing the homework of one class and another class, right? Because she couldn't, she said, and sometimes she would be falling asleep because she was so tired. But she said when she grew up, she wanted to make sure her kids had more choices and were not relegate it to the choices that she had as a kid.

And so I think that knowing what my parents did for me, I am hoping for other kids to be able to do it to where we provide a world for them that doesn't limit their choices. 

[00:09:16] Jason Browne: So to this point real quick, and I want to hear 

from both of you on this. All right. this was your mom you're speaking about.

Okay. So your mom, your mom gave you the option to have more choices in life. Absolutely. How do you think that she would feel if you chose not to actuate those choices? Like If you like, right, like so your mom worked real hard to make sure you had choices and all of us are trying to build lives in which we create choices for our families and our loved ones.

And a lot of people say that choice comes from mindset, but what happens or what is the the impact of someone not taking advantage of the choices that they have? 

[00:09:49] Dr. Chatters: Wow. That's that's a really good question. I think. So I don't know. You know And I'll say with a, a Caribbean mother, I don't know if I had a choice to not take

No, I'm kidding. . Alright. I don't know if I, I I never really seemed like it they all, kidding aside , 

[00:09:58] Jason Browne: she didn't have a choice. She had no choice. 

I, 

[00:10:00] Dr. Chatters: I didn't have there, there was a a rock. It was my mom, right. and a hard place. That was my mom and I . No, but um, even being a child that grew up having a disability, my mom never treated me like I had one.

Um, She always 

told me, cause I was for example, I had a disability, but I was on the weapons auxiliary drill team as a legally blind. 

[00:10:25] Jason Browne: Watch out. 

[00:10:25] Dr. Chatters: Right. So, But the, why I say that is, and we were the number one drill team in the country. But. My mom always told me you could do anything that you put your mind to.

You have to choose that you are going to be great at, right. and um, and, but there are some things that of course I couldn't choose that the the optometrist was going to allow me to drive at the level of my vision. I couldn't choose that. But um, so I think that I have more, I have siblings and not all of my siblings have you know, taken advantage of.

The The choices my mom has allotted for us and I think that there are some things that can hold Individuals back from being able to do that that may be a little bit beyond their control because I think about mental health Right. yeah, I think about and within that realm of mental health addiction, right different things like that to where Um, it can make it difficult for you to even be able to see the choices That you have um, and so I don't necessarily blame individuals for that.

Um, But I do think that my mom would be very disappointed and my dad. If I didn't take advantage of that, but I'm the oldest kid in our family as well. And I think the birth order has something to do with feeling as if you're paving the way for your siblings. You're a role model for them, so I don't necessarily feel like I have a choice with what my brothers probably say that probably not.

They'll say it was my choice. So you're 

[00:12:00] Jason Browne: the oldest. I am the oldest. Brandon, what are your thoughts about this idea of not taking Not Taking a choice or not, choosing, not maximizing the choices that you have, or maybe playing it safe. Or if opportunities presented to yourself, you're like, nah, I'm gonna choose not to take that.

How does that feel for you? 

[00:12:15] Brandon Rhodes: Yeah. That's what I was thinking about the whole time. Not only is there a choice, but what is the driving factor to make a choice? Um, and when I think about that, I think about just a small, thing. Me and my wife, sometimes we play games. We'll play chess together and we play in completely different ways.

My wife, Grace, she is, she knows she's watched people play chess and, um, she's read books on it and I have not. I know how to play. I don't know techniques. Um, but I've, noticed that when I play. I will make a choice real quick and when she plays, she'll take a minute or two to figure out every choice that she can play in the moment.

Almost wonder like why do I just go immediately? If I see something, I go, I don't think past its initial, initial, like surface level. I'm like, that's the most optimal move I can make right now. I don't think about five moves later when I'm about to get checkmated. And, I've asked my wife about this.

She'll think about the choices beyond that initial choice. She'll be like, okay, if I do this and then you'll do that. And then what are my choices then? And I, often wonder like. What are the driving factors behind that choice? And also, why do I make choices that way? Is it, a privilege that I wasn't given to at a young age that makes me say, Hey, I'm You need to make a choice now, whereas you don't have time to ponder these things because some of these choices might be gone.

Um, you need to be direct because people are, demanding a quick response from you, a decisive action. 

[00:14:06] Jason Browne: I can see that. 

[00:14:06] Brandon Rhodes: So I wonder about that. I wonder about the driving power because. You know, not to single any demographic out, but you know, a rich son might have all the choices in the world, but he might stay at home and play video games all day, like what's the driving power behind his choices.

[00:14:23] Jason Browne: I like the many things. I like many things that you said, especially this idea of instant gratification of a choice versus the longterm play of a choice and the implications upon me and the people around me, do I feel the urge To just be like, I'm gonna grab this now, whatever happens next is whatever, but I made my choice versus like playing it off.

And so, and 

it's not, 

[00:14:43] Brandon Rhodes: it's not, 

just that too. It's just like, I'm going to pick this now because I have to pick and I have to pick right now. You 

[00:14:49] Jason Browne: have a time limit. Yeah, 

[00:14:51] Brandon Rhodes: it's I understand by picking it now and not thinking about it. I've accepted the consequences and I will be prepared to make a choice.

After the consequences have happened and I don't, yeah, just living life in spaces where time isn't an option is makes choices quicker and less thoughtful, 

[00:15:14] Dr. Chatters: but they may not just because a choice is quicker. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's not as thoughtful. So I might, and I will, I'll say, because you may make that choice quicker than your wife makes the choice, but.

If you, were to sit down and talk it through, there's probably some thinking that you may have done, but you just did it like this where some other, some other, individuals mate. And I don't, I don't think that there's any good or bad in someone needing longer. But I, I just say that because you know, sometimes when I think about,  I, I think about, for example, being a person who always needs a ride, right?

So I'll just give I mean, I'll take you where I'm going here in a 2nd. So when. I am sitting in the car with someone, and they're taking me somewhere, and I am terrified about the way that they're driving.

I'm sitting there, and although I immediately may not say anything, immediately, right? I've made that choice, I'm going to be quiet, right? I've already thought in a split second because sometimes there is situations that have happened prior to that. When you're playing chess, it's typically not your first time playing it, right?

So there's some replication sometimes in choices that allows it to happen a lot quicker, but you may, I may think in that moment, I'm not going to say anything because I need this ride next time. Right? And if I say something, this person may not want to give me that ride next time because I made a choice to open up my mouth and say, you ran that red light, right?

Kind of a situation. So I think that sometimes like, uh, we may perceive time. In the amount of time it takes to make a choice with the depth of thought that went into making that choice. Right? And that might not necessarily be the case. 

[00:17:01] Brandon Rhodes: Well, I learned the learned response, the learned actions that happened in the past cut that.

Full time and a half. Yeah, I get that. 

[00:17:01] Jason Browne: Yeah. But I, it seems like there's also a sense of possible retaliation that impacts your choice, right? Oh yeah, absolutely. Even if it's not like a really, like a crazy, terrible thing, but just the, fact that you're rely on rides and you're like, I don't know if I wanna mess this up.

I'm choosing not to do this. Is part of your choice, dec decision matrix, but going back to Brandon just for a second about the chess. Yeah. And your appreciation about his. Um, quick decision making, I will have to ask you, Brandon, uh, who wins most of the games with you and 

[00:17:31] Dr. Chatters: your wife? Honestly, 

[00:17:33] Brandon Rhodes: it's pretty tied.

It's close. It's 

[00:17:36] Dr. Chatters: close. 

[00:17:38] Jason Browne: It's close. 

[00:17:38] Brandon Rhodes: Most of the time, it's close. Because I, I think it might be, She can't predict what I'm going to do next, and I'm right there with her. I can't predict either. 

[00:17:48] Dr. Chatters: I'm surprised I made that move. 

[00:17:48] Jason Browne: Well,

Let's see what else is surprising as we hop into the Privileged Perspective with Dr.

John Francis Planetwalker and see how he tackles the topic of choice. We'll be right back. 

[00:18:04] Dr. John Francis: I should begin at the beginning for me which was witnessing an oil spill in San Francisco Bay in 1971 two standard oil tankers collided with each other in the San Francisco Bay near the Golden Gate Bridge the bay And my girlfriend at the time and I decided that we wanted to to go and witness this oil spill that had happened I had never seen anything like this And we jumped in our car and drove into San Francisco It was just an amazing time because so much was happening in the society environment was just beginning to become A thing But I said to my girlfriend who happened to be a standard oil heiress I said to her I said we should get out of our cars and walk And she thought that was pretty interesting She said we don't have enough money to do that And as an heiress she was really familiar with having money or not having it money She had some court cases that she was working on and that we're gonna give her millions of dollars And I was like Yeah that's right We don't have enough money But we drove home and Talked about the spill and everybody was saying things like boy we should give up riding in these cars and then something happened which was a deputy sheriff in our town We lived in this little town called Inverness in Northern California and the Point Race Peninsula there's only 350 people in our town in the winter So we knew everyone And the deputy sheriff who looked at us as suspect hippies he was out in his boat in Tamales Bay which is the bay that our town is on and a long narrow Bay and a storm came up and flip the boat over and he was lost His wife and his kids were saved by a group of people but he was lost and they never found him But that day we decided to honor Jerry Tanner by walking to Santa and Selma which is about 20 miles away to dance at the lion's share a nightclub there and we were going to hear the young bloods who made popular the song get together it's an anthem for the sixties Come on people smile on your brother and they lived in our town And so we were going to walk there to celebrate Jerry's life and we were going to dance and I don't know how many of you have ever walked 20 miles but we started out in the afternoon and realized that this was going to be an all day thing And we didn't get to the nightclub until after midnight When we got there the Youngbloods were finishing up the final set with Get Together and it was very moving and everybody was singing and dancing they saw us and they said John Gene let's do it We can ride you home we can take you home with us and we said no we walked and we decided that we would walk back So we spent the night there in San Anselmo I think we found a tree that we slept we slept by The next morning we checked into the Holiday Inn to rest up for the walk back and it was on the walk back to Point Reyes to our home in Inverness that I decided that I wasn't going to wait for the money I was going to start walking right now I mean I already had started but I was going to keep walking because Jerry Tanner See he was a deputy sheriff He had a great job And he had a house with a picket fence around the house he was living the American dream and he was white too He had everything going for him and just like that He was gone And that touched me that we were about the same age and just like that he was gone And it made me understand that just like that I could be gone We all could be gone And so I decided right then that I was just going to do what I felt that I should do and that I wanted to do And that was To give up riding in motorized vehicles and I was going to walk so when we got home my girlfriend she said that's very nice you're going to do that But I have all these court things to do And I'm going to just keep driving and riding like I always have And I said I'm just going to walk And I think it was that was the decision I made and I had this opportunity to make it And as I started walking and I'd walked from our town to the next town which was Point Reyes and that was only about Point Reyes Station was about four miles away from Inverness So I would walk there every day I do shopping I go visit people and it took a little bit of time But the thing that I really liked was that in the mornings when people got in their cars and they would drive over the hill I would still be in the Inverness and I was still living in this beautiful place And I just was able to stay there And I thought that was such a gift to me But as I walked from one town to the next town people would stop and ask me if I wanted a ride because they say John it's really hard walking out here And how are you going to get around How are you going to make a living And I really didn't have the answer to those questions And after a while I realized that people were looking at me as if I had lost it had gone crazy because it would take me days sometimes to walk to where it would take someone a few hours or a few minutes to drive to And I started to wonder maybe I shouldn't have given up riding in cars but my mother would say that because I was so hard headed I could not ride in cars now that I had made that choice I think that what really Made it difficult for me is that I found that I was arguing with people all the time about my choices not to ride in cars and that was a very interesting place because I just got tired of arguing and I got tired of telling people what I thought was we're gonna make a difference if you didn't ride in cars and people said John you're not riding in a car ain't gonna make no difference for nobody And I thought about that and then on my birthday I think it was my 27th birthday That's the 23rd of February I can remember it And it was 1973 I decided I was not going to speak for one day And I got up in the morning and I didn't speak I slept out on the Mesa and I came into town and I wasn't speaking I was just listening And that choice Along with not riding in cars really changed my life not riding in cars and motorized vehicles that was one thing But to not speak was another thing And from that decision not to speak on my birthday I realized I hadn't been listening And because I hadn't been listening I had stopped learning And so I realized I had to do this if I was going to keep learning And so As the story goes I didn't ride in cars and I didn't speak for 17 years And I didn't ride in cars for 22 years and I didn't speak for 17 years one day after I had been walking for a while and I was silent at this point I had been walking up in Oregon And I was coming back through the Siskiyou Mountains in California And I came out of the Siskiyou Mountains and then came into the Redwoods in Northern California And it was raining It was really raining and native people did not like to walk through the Redwoods because they were such old spirits and they were it was a very they're very wary of Being a person walking through these beings that were so old and so I felt that I'm walking through the Redwoods and one of the things I said I know why they didn't walk through the Redwoods is because they got even more wet because the trees were dripping water on you from the rain even after the rain stopped And I came out of the Redwoods and I was like in a place called Heading into Garberville But I was up on a on the kind of a hill and the next town down in this Valley was called Garberville I was so wet and I was cold I just wanted to be in Garberville and I had enough money I thought to go rent a hotel room That's what I wanted to be I wanted to be in that warm hotel room And I thought that There is a big rig that's parked up on the top of this hill right on the edge of the hill And a lot of times big rig stopped for me and ask me if I want to ride and I always say No I don't I make my fingers walking and I point in that direction and they go Oh so you're you're walking Oh fine but I thank them and to let them know that I appreciate them stopping And here this big rig has just passed me and is parked up on this hill and put his brakes on and it's lights are flashing and I'm going This guy wants to give me a ride I'm gonna get in that big rig and I'm gonna drive it down into ride it down into Garberville and I'm gonna get to a drying place where I can dry my clothes out a laundromat and I'm gonna get a hotel room and I could see all the people there who were caught in the rain like me People who live out outdoors whenever it rains they get to the laundromat and try to dry their clothes or they find a shelter somewhere I start to walk up to the big rig there and it was like I'm like going this is What am I going to do I'm this is it I'm going to get in this big rig and I'm going to drive This is going to be the first time I went I've been driving I'm going to give up this whole journey I don't even know if I'm going to start talking or not I haven't thought of that And so as I get up closer and closer to the big rig and I'm finally there at the back and the lights are still flashing and I'm moving over to the passenger side and to get ready to walk up to the door and I hear the air brakes go off and I hear the first gear of this big rig it's 25 gears or however many gears they have but it just jumps a little and the next gear and it jumps a little more and goes a little further and I go wait a minute And it just goes through all the gears and it goes over the hill and down and down into Garberville I'm like going wait I was going to get in that big rig and it's gone now And I say huh I'm just sitting thinking about that Rain stops and the clouds part and the stars start twinkling in the sky I go Oh my goodness and I go Huh So that's it So I walk over to some little knoll on the hillside and I take out my Sleeping bag which is still wet and it's a beautiful night and I make the best of it and I go to sleep and in the morning I walk down into Garberville but what makes me think about is that this journey is way bigger than me and that something somehow put this in front of me and then said If it weren't for it being bigger than you you probably would have been in that and you probably would have gone down This journey was more important for all of us than for me It wasn't really my courage that kept me my strength that kept me out of that I don't know what that was but it was something bigger than who I am And that's gave me a lot of strength during the rest of the journey just to understand just to know that the journey was bigger than me And that if it had been just up to me the person I would have been in that vehicle and I would have driven into Garberville and who knows where that story would be And as I was walking around I walked across the United States but as I was walking I realized what a privilege it was that I could do this that I could not have to ride in cars I thought I did I thought I had to ride in cars I thought I had to talk but here I am on this journey and I'm not riding in cars and I'm not talking And while people thought Oh John that's so sad that you're not doing that I was thinking Oh my God what a what an honor and what a privilege it is To be able to be in this world and to walk and to listen and during that walking and listening I was able to go to school to get an undergraduate degree in Oregon and then walk up to Montana and get my master's degree still not talking and teach not speaking What a lesson that was to me listening and learning and feeling the environment and the planet and walking across the country to Wisconsin And there I got my PhD I studied for my PhD This is all without speaking And so I'm wow it may sound like wow this is really an amazing feat But at the same time it was such a privilege To be able to do that and to make those choices I don't even know if I could say that the choices were mine They seem to be mine to make And but it also seemed to be something that was just happening That was just happening to me in my life but I did get to the East coast And I started to speak again and I have to say I felt as though I had something to say and what I had to say was about the environment and how we treat each other because as a African American man walking across America in the 80s I didn't leave until 1983 The West Coast took me seven years to get across the United States But during that time my parents thought I would be murdered or assassinated or whatever what have you walking across America as a black man But what I experienced was something called human kindness that seemed to transcend race and politics and cultures and just we all could be kind We all can be kind to each other And so when I got to the East coast I felt that yes I learned all the way up to a PhD level about environment And I studied oil spills specifically but What I realized is that if people we're part of the environment then how we treated each other was really going to be very significant If it weren't for the way people treated me walking across America I wouldn't be here today And so when I say how we treat each other it's like the way that we treat one another is manifested in the physical environment around us and in that sense that manifestation is something that we are really part of and it he environment became to me about human rights and civil rights and economic equity and gender equality and all the ways that we relate to each other Specifically it's about human kindness because if we were kind to one another and I tried to think what is it that we're missing Why are we having so much problems what is the key What's the answer to that And it was If we were kind to each other it would all go away It would all go away I don't know if that's possible but it's possible with each person can be empowered to be kind you know and so that became my mission to talk about kindness But it all started from those choices that I made or those things that happened to me I can't really take credit for that I would love to say that it's because of my courageousness but I just feel like I'm just a part of something that's much much bigger than me And that these things we're moved by these things I guess the privilege of having been silent for 17 years and walking the planet without aid of motorized vehicles for 22 years and I guess that gives me a certain perspective that maybe I'd like to share with all of us And I still feel that it was because of that I had the privilege and the honor of being this person And I think that we all have that privilege to find out who we are and be that person And that person is who shows up for all of us

[00:38:37] Jason Browne: And that's where we're going to end it with part one of the privilege of choice. Come back next episode where we discuss this and that's where we're going to. And that's where we're going to end it for part one of the privilege of choice. Come back next episode, where we discuss the story you just heard and dive even deeper with Dr.

Francis with the QAP questions, answers, and privilege. In the meantime, go to our social media at privilege pod at all. In the meantime, go to, in the meantime, go to our social media at privilege pod on all platforms and let us know in the meantime, go to our social media @privilegepod on all platforms and let us know some of your thoughts and how privilege of choice has impact your life.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing. And of course it's a privilege.