Patch Adams Speech

PATCH ADAMS

SPEAKING IN RUSSIA

THE LOVE REVOLUTION

Patch Adams is the famous American clown Doctor. He was played by Robin Williams in the movie of the same name.

I had the privilege of travelling to Russia with Patch for 2 weeks. The speech below I recorded on Patch’s annual clown trip to Russia in 2002. This is an excerpt of a talk he gave to the clowns about the love revolution in a hotel in Saint Petersburg. This should be recommended reading about life. He is an incredible and inspiring person. Yet in a normal world he would be ordinary. Strange irony!

“…A lot of how you speak will not help a love revolution if I could show you how you spoke. You can see that you are inarticulate about the week. If love is to make a difference it can no longer be inarticulate. False humility (Patch refers to a clown) … is great to everyone, speaks like she is less great than I … cannot tolerate this type of thinking any more. If you really want peace and justice, really want Presidents and world leaders and a world that survives, you got to hear that people think you’re great, know you’re great and get to work. Get articulate about it, Great does not mean greater than, it is not a comparison or competition, everyone is great, most people give it up or never see it. Not one of you isn’t great diagnostically. Without operating from a base of feeling you are great, you’re not going to be able to do your dreams for peace and justice, you will be mouthing them, got to get articulate. Can’t stumble over what you experienced on this trip. What it meant ‘oh it was great and loving’ it is important to analyse it… 

In a love revolution the money and power revolution operates with a very few people and wanting to lessen that number all the time. And they lead through money and power over model from the beginning of recorded history. The love revolution will never lead from the few to the many. A revolution where everyone is the leader. No one will feel like a ‘not’ leader. This trip was lead. How you make a group of people that are completely diverse and different, don’t speak the language, within 24 hours make them feel part of a team, is a made thing. If you are interested in learning about leadership I can talk to you. The main way it happened is in the people you chose to work with. The MIR team, individual people, exposing you to Maria and her team choosing the five of us who lead the trip. All that made this experience happen, it did not happen by happenstance, happened by direction. Not happened by me ordering things around, it happened by you taking yourself in hand and deciding on this trip to be loving, to be a group.

Since 9/11 I’ve been asking my audiences, “What is your love strategy?” we know the revenge, fear, violence strategy. People go into the twin towers blow up, lets blow up Afghanistan, boy was the country behind it. Did anyone in the Pentagon say, you know it’s never worked, violence has never worked in history, I wonder how love would work on it.

So I started to ask: “What is your love strategy and how are you implementing it?” This trip is a love strategy. It is manipulated to give you two weeks to see what regular day to day loving and service would be like. Ladies and gentleman these are average, it becomes special in a world of loving money and power. These are average days in a loving world. A bunch of diverse people, don’t even share the language, really having fun with each other, looking after each other of all ages. We have the first nine decades represented here. We have people who don’t speak the language, people watching me not knowing what I am saying. [Patch points to non-English speaking clowns] They are sitting here absorbing something.

We don’t have a lot of time. You can’t be wimpy about being loving, if you like this, you made your part. No-one here made your part in it. If the whole is great [it is] because each one made their part. You can learn it. Learn how to go into an elevator and make the love revolution right there. Walt Whitman was a revolution, Einstein was a revolution, most revolutions have been non-violent. The love revolution is not going to have a violent anything. You notice when you watch people speak last night about loving. What happened, how it happened, your own role in it, how you might carry it on. It was created by leadership; a different kind of leadership. A simple way it is called is servant leadership, have the people leading work harder than the other people. Again, I’m saying these things partly because I have my own concerns about how long humanity can last…”

Refer YouTube for Patch Adams speech starting at 4.55.