Iran, America, and the Wheels of Peace | Rick Gunn | TEDxKish

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.

What people from different apparent culture have in common? How we are looking to build peace in the same way. In this poignant talk Rick Gunn shares a journey of two men who found each other and discovered the wheels of peace.

Rick Gunn is an award winning photographer, writer, adventurer, and motivational speaker based in the U.S. His work has appeared in countless books, websites and publications including "Adventure Sports Journal", "Adventure Cyclist", "Wend", "USA Today", "People" and "The New York Times".

Mahatma Gandhi once said,

"There are two types
of power in the world:

the first obtained
for the fear of punishment,

and the second through acts of love."

He believed in love as a force for change,

and that any power obtained through
the fear of punishment was weak,

temporary, corrosive to the human spirit,

whereas that power enacted
through the acts of love

was 1,000 times more effective.

And better yet, permanent.

I felt that power of love from my father

the first time he taught me
how to ride a bicycle.

His love took the form of patience.

I recall how he gently ran beside me
holding, steadying, pushing,

gently encouraging me to trust
in what he knew was inside of me.

I must have failed 100 times.

But then came that moment,
as if by some act of magic,

my tires righted for the first time.

And I remember as this young child

feeling as if I was floating in flight
through the heart of a neighborhood.

And for that moment, all the things
that hung heavy in my young heart,

all the things my young mind
couldn't understand,

my parents late-night fights,

their crumbling marriage,
the slow-moving disease

that crept through my mother's body,

all of it seemed to disappear
that first afternoon.

And so it was not long after that
that I began a ritual of my own.

It began each day after school

as I'd hurriedly make my way
to my bicycle,

grab it from the rack,
pedal across my neighborhood,

push it beneath the fence,

and then cycle deep
into the heart of a nearby wildlands

in the east of the San Francisco Bay area.

And it was there that I found solace.

Simply peddling over dirt,
through the forest and the trees,

because there was something
in that simple act of motion

atop that equally simple machine
of rubber and steel

that brought me back to myself.

And in that I was free.

But then my life changed
as all lives must.

And within two years,
my parents had argued so much,

my father moved out of the house,
and I lost interest in that bike.

And as it sat dormant collecting dust
in some remote corner of the garage,

my mother died in the midst
of a bitter divorce.

Needless to say, as I was first thrust out
in the world as a young man,

I spent the first decade of my life angry,

bitter, hurting myself, hurting others,

the power of love nowhere to be found.

But then my father returned to my life.

He said to me, "I understand.

I felt that loss, too.

And I needed to talk to somebody.

Perhaps you should
think about that as well."

Six months later, I sat
before a psychotherapist.

"I think I'm crazy," I said to her.

I thought she'd have me committed.

Instead, she looked at me with warm,
empathetic eyes, and she said,

"Rick, the ones
who are truly crazy in this world

are the ones who are trying very hard
to convince you that they're not."

That was the beginning of my healing path.

And for the next three years,
I dug deeply into myself,

sometimes looking at parts
I didn't want to see.

But after that three-years period,
there came what some people call

a moment of clarity,
a tipping point, if you will,

at which I was able to ask myself
one of life's most important questions:

what do you want before you die?

What is your dream?

I had worked 14 years
as a daily newspaper photographer,

and I knew one thing for sure:
that career was no longer feeding me.

I had had a larger dream.

I had always dreamed of riding
a bicycle around the world.

And so within a two-year period of time,

I found myself sitting on the top
of the Golden Gate Bridge on my bike,

saying goodbye to friends and family,
riding 4,000 miles across America.

I pedaled in America 4,000 miles there,
and moved on to Europe

where I spent eight months cycling through
the coldest winter in European record.

From there, I went south
through Greece and into Turkey.

I was denied a visa to come into Iran

so I continued through
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, China,

18,000 feet over the Tibetan Plateau,
and down into India,

Nepal, and Bangladesh.

It was there that I began
to see something different

from the seat of my bicycle:

suffering on a level
that I had never seen before.

And only then did I learn
the second power of love,

the first being the care of self,
and the second to allow that

to be reflected outwards,
towards service to others.

I began volunteering
in the time off my bike.

The first, the hardest, was comforting

the dead and dying
in an aid hospice in Thailand.

That was followed by bomb extraction work

in Laos alongside these gentlemen

that extract bombs and keep them
from killing anybody else.

I followed that up in Vietnam by working
alongside mine victim rehabilitation

and then taught English
to impoverished children in Cambodia.

But the reason I'm here today

is to tell you about
what happened just after that.

I was cycling south through Thailand,

and I met this gentleman,
an Iranian from Mashhad, Iran.

We corresponded by email for a while.

Mohammed Tajaran was his name.

He invited me to come to Penang, Malaysia.

Pretty soon, I was sitting
having coffee and lunch with him.

We agreed we'd ride
together across Malaysia,

across Malaysia's main range, one
of the oldest rainforests in the world.

And as we rode side by side,
I asked him about his life.

What he told me was profound.

He told me, his father had died
when he was young,

and that he'd done
everything right in his life;

that he got his degree in engineering,
opened a successful business.

But then as he was climbing
a mountain one day,

he realized that it just wasn't right.

And so, he began to plan for a journey.

For him, he had a dream
to cycle around the world.

And as he got ready
to do that, he learned English,

and then he just set out
with 500 bucks in his pocket.

Well, that afternoon, what I realized

was this man was telling my story.

That was my story.

And I thought to myself: here was
this man that people were saying,

this is your enemy, when, in fact,
I had more in common with this man

than I had with many
of my friends back home.

After the end of our ride,

into the east coast of Malaysia,
we dug a hole.

He was riding
around the world planting trees.

And we decided to plant
a tree together, for peace,

a tree that still remains
and grows for peace

between our two countries,
America and Iran.

(Applause)

And when I said goodbye to Mohammed,
I told him that I loved him.

I began to weep because I was sorry
that our two countries

were hurling a warlike rhetoric
at one another.

They were not acting
from the power of love,

but they were acting from this power

they hope to attain
through threats of punishment.

And so, over the years
that I didn't see Mohammed,

we developed a second program project
called "The Wheels of Peace".

And instead of explaining that to you,

I'd like to invite him out here
to explain it to you himself.

Mohammed, are you in there somewhere?
He got lost on his bike somewhere.

Where are you Mohammed? He's shy.

He doesn't want to come out now.

Mohammad, are you back there?

I don't know what happened.

(Applause)

Mohammed Tajaran: I've been waiting
so long for this moment

to hug one of my best friends in front
of a crowd in my country, in Iran.

I'm so excited, so emotional now.

"Wheels of Peace" is a project

to connect kids
from two different nations.

They're like two wheels of a bicycle,
totally dependent on each other.

If one doesn't work,
the other one would fail.

Rick and I are just like a frame
trying to connect them through our force,

our letters and exchanging those letters.

A letter to understand

they have the same values
in the whole system.

In the same way, in our world,

peace is related to the peace
of every single nation.

As Saadi said,

"Human beings are members of a whole,
in creation of one essence and soul.

If one member is afflicted with pain,
other members uneasy will remain."

RG: And so Mohammed and I visited
classrooms in Iran and America.

Each one of us would collect
artwork and letters

to be exchanged by the children.

Then we met in--
I can't say the word,

Kish Island, just next door last year.

And we brought that artwork
and those letters together.

And I guess the thing
that I want to finish with is:

what did you learn from all of this?

And you know, I think it's something
that all of you already know;

that in our approach every day,
moment to moment,

we have a choice to operate
from what Gandhi spoke of,

to operate from that place of love
or to operate from that place of fear.

And so, for me personally,
I think you know the choice,

I think you know the choice for Mohammad.

But we'll be gone soon enough
in so many years,

and we have the next generation coming.

So I'd like to share with you
what they had to say

to one another with their art
and with their letters.

[What did the children of America and Iran
have to say to one another?]

(Video) (Music)

[I love you my friend!]

[Aren't we all humans,
then why can't we live in peace?]

[Love]

[me and you, friends forever]

[Friends]

[No more war]

[Iran, America, Peace]

[No war, more peace]

[Love is the only force capable of turning
an enemy into a friend." Dr.MLK Jr.]

(Applause)

RG: Thank you.

MT: Thank you very much.
I really appreciate it.

(Applause)