REMARKS BY BENJAMIN S. CARSON, M.D.
Director, Pediatric Neurosurgery and Professor
The Johns Hopkins Hospital,
At the 129th Ursinus College Commencement
May 13, 2000, Collegeville, Pennsylvania
Contact: Sally Widman
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Thank you very much. It's a great honor to be here. I want to thank the class of 2000 for giving me the privilege of sharing in this momentous day for you as you embark upon your great dreams.
I think dreams are such important factors in terms of where one ends up in life. I can remember as a youngster spending many, many hours in the hallways of Detroit's Receiving Hospital, of Boston City Hospital. We were on medical assistance and we had to wait for hours until one of the interns or residents could see us. And that was a great time for me, because I used to love to listen to the P.A. system:
"Dr. Johnson Dr. Johnson to the emergency room; Dr. Jones to the clinic-and I would say one day they're going to be saying 'Dr. Carson Dr. Carson to the operating room,'" but of course now they would have beepers, so I still don't get to hear it. But it was so important you know just having that dream, having that aspiration. It makes an incredible difference. And obviously things have worked out extremely well in terms of my dreams of being a physician...
But my dreams kind of shattered for me a little bit when I was 8 years old. My parents got divorced. You know my mother was one of 24 children, and she got married at age 13. They moved from rural Tennessee to Detroit. She discovered my father was a bigamist. I was telling that story at a commencement at the University of Utah. Nobody seemed to think it was that strange. But my mother thought it was pretty strange. Actually they don't do that in Utah anymore. In fact, on a more serious note, if everybody in this country had the morals of the people of Utah, I think we'd be in pretty good shape.
But at any rate, we moved to Boston to live with my mother's older sister and brother-in-law in a typical tenement, large multi-family dwelling, sirens, gangs, murders, rats, roaches, the whole nine yards. We became extraordinarily familiar with all the aspects of poverty and disadvantage that one can imagine. My mother worked two or three jobs at a time as a domestic hoping beyond hope that one day we'd be able to move back to Detroit and she'd be independent. And after a couple of years that was the case.
I was a fifth grader, perhaps the worst fifth grader you've ever seen. I was a horrible student. And I remember once we were having an argument in my fifth grade class about who was the dumbest person in my class, and it wasn't that much of an argument -- they all agreed it was me. But someone tried to extend the argument to who was the dumbest person in the world. And I took exception with that, so we had a rather vigorous argument.
Unfortunately that day we had a math quiz and I got a zero. Now, that wasn't a problem, I always got a zero. The problem was on that particular day the teacher said you had to pass your test to the person behind you. They would correct it, give it back to you, the teacher would call your name out loud and you had to report your score-out loud. Now this was great if you got a 95 or a 100.
Wasn't so good if you got a zero, particularly if you'd just had an argument about who was the dumbest person in the world. I said, 'oh no, they're just gonna laugh themselves to death when I say zero' oh what can I do? I started scheming. I said, "I know -- when the teacher calls my name, I'll mumble. Maybe she'll just misinterpret what I said and just write it down and move on." So when she called my name, I said "nuhhhhhh." And she said "Nine! Oh, Benjamin, that's wonderful! I knew you could do it if you just applied yourself. Class, can you see what Benjamin has done?" And she just ranted and raved for about five minutes, and finally the girl behind me couldn't take it any longer and she stood up and said, "He said none!" Well of course the kids were rolling in the aisles and the teacher was so embarrassed and if I could have disappeared into thin air, never to be heard from again in the history of the world, I would gladly have done so.
But I couldn't, so I had to just sit there and act like it didn't bother me. But it did. It bothered me a lot. Not enough to make me study, but it bothered me A LOT. I was still into doing all the things that little kids do and having fun. But, you know, my mother was very disturbed. She'd had such a difficult life and you know I was failing just about every subject. My brother was doing poorly, she didn't know what to do. So she asked God to give her the wisdom to know what to do and He did. At least in her opinion. My brother and I didn't think it was all that wise, cause it was to turn off the TV. Let us watch only two or three TV programs during the week and with all that spare time, read two books apiece from the Detroit public library, and submit to her written book reports. Which she couldn't read, but we didn't know that.
So she had pulled a fast one on us, but interestingly enough, you know, we had to read those books and, you know, between the covers of those books, even though we were desperately poor, I could go anyplace in the world? I could be anybody. I could do anything. All of a sudden, I could imagine myself in a laboratory pouring chemicals from beakers into flasks and see steam was rising and completing circuits and looking through microscopes and telescopes and discovering things and everybody else around me just wanted to get a job in a factory so they could get a cool car and some cool clothes. And things really changed dramatically as I began to envision different things for myself.
And it made an enormous difference, and within the space of a year and a half I went from the bottom of the class to the top of the class -- much to the consternation of all the students who used to laugh and call me "dummy" -- the same ones by the time I was in the 7th grade, were coming to me and saying, "Hey, Benny, how do you work this problem?"
And I'd say, "Sit at my feet, youngster, while I instruct you." I was perhaps a little obnoxious. And you know it really got to a point where I think I was sick. I got to the point where if I got a 99 on a test and somebody else got a 100, I was devastated. And I couldn't wait until the next test when I could get a higher mark than they did. And I remember when I was in the 9th grade, I went up to one of my classmates and said "Dennis, why do you hate me so much?" and he looked me dead in the eye and he said, "Because you're so obnoxious."
And I said "Obnoxious! Moi?" He said, "You have to have the highest mark on everything," and you know, it was like somebody stabbed me in the heart with a dagger. And I began to realize that I had become one of those people that I didn't like when I was not doing so well. And I came to the conclusion that the only thing that I had to do was my best. Really didn't have to compare myself with anybody else. And boy did that lift a tremendous burden from my shoulders. It made all the difference in the world.
And when you come to that realization, all you have to do is your best, think about that. Because you think about what your best actually is. You know, I have this great affinity for the brain as a brain surgeon, as you might imagine. I believe the human brain is the most fantastic organ system in the entire universe. It has billions and billions of neurons, hundreds of billions of interconnections. It can process more than 2 million bits of information per second, it doesn't forget anything you've ever seen, anything you've ever heard.
Let me ask you a question. How many of you remember your birthday? Can I just see your hands? OK now, that's pretty good! Now. Now what did your brain have to do for you to respond to that question?
Give you an example of the sophistication of your brain:
First of all the sound waves had to leave my lips, enter your auditory meatus, travel down to the tympanic membrane, set up a vibratory force, which traveled across the ossicles of your middle ear to the oval and round windows, setting up a vibratory force in the endolymph, which mechanically distorted the microcillia, converting mechanical energy to electrical energy, which traveled across the cochlear nerve to the cochlear nucleus to the pons-to-medullary juncture, from there to the superior olivary nucleus ascending bilaterally up the brain stem to the lateral lemniscus and the anterior colliculus and the medial geniculate nuclei across the thalamic radiations to the posterior temporal lobes, going through the frontal lobes, coming down the...[applause and cheers drown this segment out.]
Anyway! You get the point. And that's the simplified version of what your brain had to do. It can do MUCH more complex things than that and you barely have to think about it. So with a brain like that, why would anybody ever utter the words, "I can't?"
And those are things that need to be abolished from our vocabulary. It's one of the reasons that my wife and I started our scholarship program, called Carson Scholarships, which is throughout Maryland, Delaware, Washington, D.C. has recently has moved into parts of Pennsylvania, and basically I used to go into the schools and I would see all these trophies-all-state wrestling, all-state basketball, all-state this and that. And there was so much hoopla over these athletes and I would say what about the kids who are academic superstars-what do they get? Pat on the head and a National Honor Society pin. The other kids look at them as nerds and eggheads, and I said, "Wait a minute. There is something wrong with this picture."
So we started giving $1,000 scholarships to students in the 4th grade, from the 4th to the 12th grade, for superior academic performance, and humanitarian qualities. Cause we're not looking for people who are just smart -- you know the Marquis de Sade was smart. Hitler was smart. What did they do with it? So we want people who also care about others, and are nice and manifest that through their actions. And the money goes into a trust fund. It's developed by our financial people. Students get a statement each year as to how much they've accumulated in terms of interest. They can win multiple years in a row, earn an enormous amount of money. School gets a big trophy every bit as impressive as the ones for sports and entertainment and we make a big deal out of these kids. And it has made a tremendous difference. Teachers have told us that grade point averages in classes where they have a scholar have risen a whole point, because all of a sudden the students are saying, "It's cool to be smart."
And we need to begin to emphasize that much more. In whatever you decide to do as you go out there, this is the battle that we are in right now for the heart and soul of our nation. We rank dead last in science and math. We are going to India and Pakistan to recruit software engineers, because we're not developing enough people in this country. We cannot allow that to persist. Because you stop and you think about other pinnacle nations: ancient Egypt, Rome, Greece. What happened to each one of them? They had no competition, just like we don't. They all became enamored of sports and entertainment, lifestyles of the rich and famous. They lost their moral compass, and their societies went right down the tubes. And somebody says it can't happen here, but it's already in the process of happening. Because we have to make sure that we think. We use those incredible brains of ours. We don't let Hollywood and Washington D.C. define who we, are because that's not who we are. We are people with values and principles and smarts and we need to begin to emphasize that.
I want to close by telling you my definition of success.
You know, interestingly enough, in 1997 I was asked if I would come to South Africa to lead a team in an attempt to separate type 2 vertical craniopagus twins. Those are twins that are joined at the top of the head facing in opposite directions. There'd been 13 attempts to separate twins like that before, none of which had been successful. So I knew this was going to be a great medical challenge. But there was another challenge. It was a social challenge. You see the operations was going to be done at the Medical University of South Africa at Medunsa, the only major black teaching hospital in South Africa -- always the stepchild throughout apartheid, and even in the post-apartheid, period.
And they were hoping that by doing something that no one else had ever done, that it would really elevate their status. And all of that social pressure was on my shoulders, and I wasn't quite prepared for that and I said "Lord, you know, you're going to have to show me something here, because, you know people smarter than me and more talented than me have tried this and failed." As I was studying the various radiographic studies, I noticed that the common draining sinus for their brains was a little narrower right in the middle than it was in either end, and I felt strongly impressed that instead of doing what the neurosurgical literature has traditionally advocated -- which would be to decide which twin to give the major drainage system to and to divide the other one from that twin over the course of three or four operations with the hope that they would each develop adequate collateral circulation for drainage of their brains -- I said, "Let's cut it right in the middle." And when I explained that to the team, they said, they said, "That's -- you're the boss. We're going to do whatever you want to do."
Well, I was thrilled when I went to the operating room, 6:30 in the morning. This was two days before New Year's in 1998. They had the big sign over the operating room that said "God Bless Joseph and Luka Banda." They were having song service and prayer service. I asked them to bring a stereo system into the operating room to play inspirational music.
Nineteen hours into the operation, we were only three-quarters of the way complete. The part that remained appeared impossible to complete. The blood vessels were engorged, they were adhesed, and tangled and it looked absolutely impossible. I thought about the first set of Siamese twins we separated: 60 units of blood. The second set, 80 units, and as I looked at that tangle, I said, "There's not enough blood in South Africa." And we halted the operation and went into conference. And I said "Maybe we should just cover over what's been done there and wait for a few months and come back and maybe they will have developed enough collateral circulation that we can cut through those vessels and they would survive."
And the doctors from Zambia and South Africa said "That's a great idea" and "I know you can do that at Johns Hopkins, but we don't have the ability to keep partially separated twins alive. They'll die."
Now I really felt the weight of the world on my shoulders as I went back in there. Didn't have my $350,000 Zeiss operating microscope or my $400,000 3-D wand, or my lasers or my ultrasounds or any of this stuff that I have at Hopkins. I had a scalpel, my lupes, and a prayer on my lips, and I said, "God, this one's up to you."
Well to make a long story short, when I made the final cut between those vessels that separated those twins, we had used only 4 units of blood, and on the stereo system came the "Hallelujah Chorus." Everybody had goose bumps. And when we finished that operation after 28 hours, one of those twins opened his little eyes, reached up for the tubes. The other one did the same thing by the time we got to the ICU. Within two days they were extubated, within three days they were eating, within two weeks crawling around, perfectly normal -- but that wasn't the success.
The success, the real success, you had to be there to witness, was the state of the people. The people were so ecstatic, they were literally dancing in the street. We could not walk down the hallways, their level of self-esteem was through the roof.
And you know that's' what success is all about. It's not houses and cars. It's about using your God given talents, developing them to the extent that you become valuable to the people around you, so that you can lift them up. And if you think about that as you go through life, then you'll know the meaning of THINK BIG:
The "T" is for "Talent," which God gave to every single person, not just the ability to sing and dance and throw a ball-nothing wrong with those things-but intellectual talent, which each one of you have. We need to develop that, emphasize that, in our sphere of influence.
The "H" is for "Honesty." If you lead a clean and honest life you don't have to worry about skeletons in the closet, because if you put them there, I guarantee you they will come back to haunt you. And if you always tell the truth you don't have to try to remember what you said three months ago.
The "I" is for "Insight," which comes from listening to people who've already gone where you're trying to go. Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, said "wise is the person who can learn from someone else's triumphs and mistakes" and said "the person who cannot is a fool."
The "N" is for "Nice." Be nice to people, because once they get over their suspicion of why you're being nice, they'll be nice to you, and you can get so much more done that way. And if you're not a nice person, and of course everybody thinks they are, I want you to take a pledge with me today. Can we raise our hands and take a pledge that we're going to be nice to everybody we encounter-and the audience too-for one week. Can we do that? Just for one week, we're going to be nice to every single person. Now that includes members of your own family too. OK? You got that? That means you can't talk about people behind their back, by the way. OK? Or in front of their back.
And then, the "K" is for "Knowledge." Knowledge is the thing that makes you into a more valuable person. You know, do I have a big house? Yes. Lots of cars? Yeah, I grew up in Detroit. I like cars. All the things that Robin Leach thinks are important. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous-I have 'em. No big deal. But you know something? If somebody takes them all away, I don't care. Know why? Because I can get 'em all right back almost immediately with what's up here [pointing to head.] Or at least I could before managed care. And that's what Solomon meant when he said "Gold, silver and rubies are nice, but we treasure far above those things, knowledge, wisdom and understanding." Why? Because with knowledge, wisdom and understanding you get all the gold and silver and rubies you want. But more important you come to realize they don't amount to a hill of beans, and that the most important thing is becoming valuable to the people around you.
The "B" is for "Books," which is the mechanism of obtaining that knowledge, and it's never too late to do that. You know my mother did eventually teach herself how to read, got her GED, went on to college in 1994, got a honorary doctorate degree, so she's Dr. Carson now too. So it's never too late.
And the second "I" is for "In-depth learning," learning for the sake of knowledge and understanding as opposed to superficial learning. Superficial learners are people who cram, cram, cram before a test, sometimes do OK and three weeks later know nothing. And I'm sure none of you all know people like that. But that's how we got to be last in science and math in all the industrial nations. We've got to change that.
And finally, the last letter, "G" is for "God." Don't ever be ashamed of God, don't get too big for God, don't get to the place where, like the people in my profession, they get all these letters behind their name, and start trying to rearrange them to make them spell "God."
You know, we live in a nation that was founded on Godly principles, and some people say you're not supposed to talk about God in public, somehow that violates the concept of separation of church and state. Let me tell you something. That's a bunch of crap. Because, you know, our bill of rights, the preamble to our Constitution talks about certain inalienable rights that our Creator, a.k.a. God, endowed us with. The Pledge of Allegiance to our flag says we are "one nation under-God." Most courtrooms in the land, somewhere on the wall it says, "In God we trust." Every coin in our pocket, every bill in our wallet says "In God we trust." So if it's in our Constitution, if it's in our Pledge, it's in our courts and it's on our money, but we can't talk about it -- what is that?
In medicine, we call it "schizophrenia."
And I think maybe that explains a lot of the things that are going on in our nation as we go forth from this place, lets please go forth with the ideal that it's all right to live by Godly principles of caring about your neighbor, of loving your fellow man, of developing your God-given talents to the utmost so that you become valuable. And having values and principles and standing for something. And when we do that, then and only then, will we have "one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
Thank you and congratulations.
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