[MUSIC PLAYING] I have always been a
person that believes that a single moment in time
can change a person's life. And it's kind of true if you
think about it--if you look at your life and what makes it
a great story, it's the moments. That's what we remember,
that's what we treasure. And some of those moments
are awesome; they're epic. Some of them can even be tragic. But it is the significance
of those experiences that make them a moment. Now more than ever. It's a weird time right now. We're living in a pandemic,
where it's just different, and we're going through a lot. And we have struggled
and faced things that most people that
we know in our lifetime have never had to face. But I still believe that the
better we are creating moments in the lives of
our family members and ourselves, the more we're
able to create a better story. You see, not too long ago
there was a little guy. And this little child, this
kid when he would go to school, he didn't struggle with
science or English, that wasn't his problem. The little kid just
struggled sitting still. And he would sit at his
desk, and he would just, he would tap, constantly. His right hand would
go, his feet would go, his left hand would go. And if you've ever sat in
a meeting next to someone, and they're tapping their
pen, or they're constantly moving or tapping their
desk, it gets annoying. And all the other kids, they
called him the twitcher, he got nicknamed the
tapper and was consistently just bullied and bullied. Even the teachers would
look at the young man and consistently
say, "Can you stop?" Like, "Young man, I need you
to hold still; stop tapping." And it happened again
and again and again. The kid eventually got sent
to the principal's office. And he took the long walk
down the hall, he was nervous, he sat down with the principal. And the principal looked over
and said, "Why are you here? Why did you get sent here?" And the kid just said, "I have
a hard time sitting still." And the principal
thinks for a minute, and he goes, "OK,
all right, listen. I don't know what else to do. I'm going to send
you back to class." "But here's the thing,
when you go back to class, and you feel like
you need to move," he said, "kid, just
sit on your hands. OK don't hit anything. Just sit on your hands." And the kid thought
it was a decent idea. The principal thought it
was a stroke of genius and dismisses the kid
out of his office. He goes down the hallway
back into his class. And the kid sits down, and
he starts to pay attention. And not three minutes
goes by, and then all a sudden, he starts to tap. His right hand goes,
then his left hand goes, but then he remembered that
he's got to sit on his hands. But when he sat on his hands,
his feet would start tapping. You guys, it happened again and
again and again, until one day there was a teacher. And his name was Mr. Jensen. He'd been teaching for
a long time, white hair, had big Coke bottle
glasses, always wore suspenders and a red tie. And he looked at the boy
as he was tapping in class, and he just gently said, "Young
man in the back," he said, "you and me, we're going to have
a conversation after class." The kid's nervous. The bell rings, class dismissed. It's a completely empty
room minus Mr. Jensen and the little boy. The teacher goes to
the back of the room; he grabbed a big chair
and a little chair and motions for the
kid to come over. He says, "Come here, come
here, sit down, sit down." And the kid, thinking
he's in so much trouble, watches as Mr.
Jensen leans forward and he just says, "Listen, do
you know why we're talking?" He said, "Do you know why I
told you to stay after class?" And the boy said, "Yeah,
it's because I move. It's because I have a
hard time sitting still. It's the only reason anybody
wants to talk to me." And Mr. Jensen leaned forward,
and he said, "Listen, I want you to know I know who you are. I've heard about you. And you're the kid
that everybody teases. You get nicknamed 'the
twitcher'; you get called 'the tapper.' You're the kid
that's on the list. All the other teachers,
they talk about you. You're the kid that
constantly taps. You tap in my class, and you
tap in everybody else's class. "You're the kid that got sent
to the principal's office two weeks ago because you
just can't sit still." He said, "But I want you to know
that I've been watching you." And he said, "I
just, I simply watch. I've sat back. And every time when
you do your assignment, you'll start tapping
your right hand, and then literally
at the same time you'll start moving your
left hand at a totally different rhythm." He said, in big adult words,
"We call that ambidextrous." And the little kid's
like, "amble what?" He had no idea what that meant. And Mr. Jensen said, "OK
I got to try something." He said, "Can you tap your
head and rub your belly at the same time?" He said, "I gotta know." He said, "Just try it." And the little kid gave it
a go, and he could do it. And then Mr. Jensen said,
"OK can you switch it?" He said, "Can you rub your
head and then tap your belly?" And literally, without thinking
about it, the kid could do it. Mr. Jensen, he leaned back in
his chair, he folded his arms, and he laughed. And he looked at the kid,
and he said, "I knew it. I knew it." And he leaned forward
and simply said, "I don't think you're a problem. I just think you're a drummer." Remember when I told everybody
as I started today that I am the type of person that believes
in the power of moments--single moments in time that have
the ability to change a person's life? Because in that moment Mr.
Jensen, the old teacher, he leaned back in his desk, and
he opened up the top drawer. And he reached inside, and he
took out my very first pair of drumsticks. My very first pair. I was the kid that
was nicknamed. I was the kid was bullied. I was the kid that was teased. I was constantly
deemed a problem. And it took one person in my
life who saw an opportunity. For 22 years, I've
had the opportunity to tour and record all over
the world, playing drums. I remember when I
graduated high school, and I had no idea what I
wanted to do with my life. And so what do you
do when you have no idea what you want to do? You go to college, right? So I went to school. I graduated in 2012 with a
bachelor's degree and zero college debt. Why? Music scholarships, baby. And I'm not telling you that
to go, "Oh wow, good for you, Clint." Or, "What was that like?" I'm telling you that
because of one person who instilled hope by
creating a moment that represented possibilities. And for an educator
or a parent or anybody in any career,
anybody in our lives, I think that we find the
greatest hope in instilling hope in other people. Mr. Jensen, all he
simply did for me in creating hope
was he communicated my potential and my worth
so well to the point that I saw it within myself. He helped me to see the
possibilities of what could be. He helped me to see the
solution, not the problem. He created a moment that helped
me to write a better story. And I know right now it's
really easy to turn on the news. It's really easy to flip
through social media and see what's wrong,
to look at our society, to look at our circumstances,
to look at this pandemic, and to worry. But I promise that the better we
get at looking at what's right, looking at what's good,
seeing the possibilities, looking at a problem
and seeing the solution, it allows us to create
hope within our lives. It allows us to
create a better story. And it's done simply by
just creating small moments. Mr. Jensen literally
designed a moment of hope. And we can do the same things. In the Book of Alma there's a
scripture that talks about that it is by small and simple things
that great things come to pass. And in my life, some of the
greatest moments of hope have come through just
small and simple moments, where somebody believed in me. Somebody helped
me to see further than I could see on my own. It was through a
moment where somebody gave some sort of encouragement,
or they were there at the right time at the right
place, or even a moment of hope where I got down on my knees
and I prayed for guidance. And that was a moment where
I received revelation, I received direction. I think sometimes in life,
if we can just simply go as far as we can
see, when we get there, we have the ability
to see further. But when we surround ourselves
with good people doing good things that have
good perspectives, we allow ourselves to
live a better reality. And whatever is real to us
influences our behavior. And when we set ourselves
up around positive things, we create positive hope. We create a better story. My mom, growing up, she always
told me, she said, "Clint, little by little
makes a little a lot." And there's a really great
quote by Mother Teresa where she says that "sometimes
in life, our efforts, they might just seem like
they're a drop in the bucket, but at least it's a
drop in the bucket." There's something to
be said for trying, for moving as far as you can
see, and when you get there you can usually see further. And when we surround
ourselves with people that when there's those
days, those hard days when we can't see, when we don't
know what to do, and all we see is the problems,
it's the Mr. Jensens that come into our lives. It's the power of
a Heavenly Father. It's the power of a Savior. It's the power of an advocate
that looks at a problem and says there's possibility,
that looks at people like us and says, "I will help you
to live a better story. It's the power of a Mr. Jensen." In our lives right now,
we've been given two things. We've been given time,
obviously, to be here. But second, we've been
given the opportunity to choose what we're going to
do with the time that we have. I hope you'll choose
to see the good, choose to see what's right,
with yourself and with others. And in doing so, you will
create a more hopeful life. And lastly, I hope you'll
choose to be a Mr. Jensen. And if you do, I promise
that the best is yet to come.
