Dr Patch Adams has clowned around in 70 countries, visiting orphanages and nursing homes to bring cheer to the less fortunate.
CAN you imagine a world where no one knows what war is and have to look up a dictionary for its meaning?
Impossible though it may sound, it is the goal of one Dr Patch Adams who lost his father to the Korean War when he was 16.
So don’t be surprised if you are at one of his inspiring talks and end up hugging total strangers tightly or telling them that you love them. That’s exactly what happened at the Securities Commission in Kuala Lumpur on Friday, for no less than one-and-a-half hours!
Picture of fun: The real Dr Adams doesn’t wear a stuffy doctor’s coat but dresses in psychedelic outfits.The exercises (as Dr Adams calls them) comprise the first part of his talk titled: ‘What’s Your Love Strategy?’ at The Gathering Of Great Minds — Series 3, a series of talks organised by Live and Inspiremagazine.
Many of us would have known of Patch Adams from the hit movie starring Robin Williams. But there is more to Dr Adams than the Hollywood movie portrayed.
For starters, the real Dr Adams doesn’t wear a stuffy doctor’s coat. Instead, the 65-year-old physician dresses in psychedelic outfits, dons sneakers and sports an unusual fork earring. In his pockets are all kinds of props and gadgets, ranging from red noses to dental braces and even fake drool.
Behind the seeming eccentrics however lies a wealth of compassion and wisdom that comes from Dr Adams’ personal experience and thirst for knowledge. The funny doctor has 35,000 books in his library!
The six-foot Dr Adams, who easily commands attention, has been a clown every day since coming out from a psychiatric hospital at the age of 18. (See separate story.)
“Ninety-nine per cent of people will hug you when you are a clown. That won’t happen if you’re in a grey suit looking like an old fart,” Dr Adams says, amid laughter from a 300-strong audience.
Dr Adams is committed to what he does – being on the go 300 days a year. His two sons – Zag and Lars – join him on his trips around the world to cheer up the sick and less fortunate.
To date, Dr Adams has clowned around in 70 countries, visiting over 2,000 orphanages and 1,000 nursing homes. He even put on his clown’s act for five Trinidadian “death row” prisoners a day before they were executed.
Filled with love: Dr Adams getting the participants to hug each other during the talk.Dr Adams claims to have stopped many fights with his antics – be it on the streets or bars. And he has held no fewer than 2,000 starving children in his arms.
For a man whose life revolves around cheering up others, Dr Adams is disappointed at how impersonal people have become these days.
Relating his long journey from America to Malaysia that involved three flights, he laments: “No one had eye contact with anyone else. It seemed like second nature.”
It is this kind of indifference that Dr Adams is striving to change. Throughout his interactive session, the larger-than-life Dr Adams reaches out to the audience by sharing funny anecdotes, singing Country and Western songs and reciting several Pablo Neruda poems.
But it is more than just comic relief that he imparts – he drives home a message on the importance of love (and not necessarily the romantic kind).
“I have called up CNN many times as Patch Adams the famous guy to offer a love strategy: about a loving response (to war). Every single time I called up, whoever talked to me said no one would be interested,” he says.
“But I know many thousands of people and no one wants the war.”
He asks the audience if anyone thinks there are more important things in their lives than “loving”. Not a single hand shoots up.
“It’s unanimous. Loving to this audience is the most important thing in life. I’ve lectured about 30 million people and about 10 people have raised their hands. That is mathematically insignificant,” he declares.
But he quickly points out that no one has a philosophy on loving and how to carry it out.
“In my 45 years of asking people, no one has ever jumped right into discussion on how to love themselves, their God, their children, humanity, trees. Maybe CNN was right,” he says.
He points that the average American has 13 years of compulsory education of which five hours a week is devoted to science, history, mathematics and languages.
“But nothing is taught about the most important thing in life. Certainly no one would say mathematics is the most important thing in life.”
Dr Adams is amazed that most of America is depressed and miserable.
“If you have food and friends, it’s already a luxury.”
He also believes that depression is just a pharmaceutical company’s diagnosis.
“Depression is a symptom of loneliness. It is not a disease. Loneliness is the disease,” he says.
Dr Adams is dismayed that nature is being desecrated, that children are exploited as sex slaves and millions are starving to death.
He believes that humans are beautiful by nature but a lot of that beauty has been damaged because of money and power.
“There is no love strategy there, yet loving seems to be the most important thing. That’s why I do the things I do,” he shares, adding that he has been beaten up about 100 times and imprisoned a few times before (on a short-term basis).
For Dr Adams, friends remain the most important thing in his life.
“For me, a friend is my God. I love friends. When I answer my mail, I’m looking for friends.”
Dr Adams, who has yet to switch to the computer and still relies on snail mail, says he is in constant correspondence with 1,600 people and answers every single letter he receives.
He points out that humans have always been communal animals, adding that the nuclear family is an unnatural way of living.
He also assumes that strangers are friends he has not met yet, while friends are a possession.
“I’m addicted to people. If you sit next to me on an airplane, you are in trouble. If you’re in an elevator and that door shuts, I’m sorry,” he quips.
Ultimately, Dr Adams has two simple strategies for happiness – gratitude and love.
“At 18, I dove into the ocean of gratitude and I never found the shore. It has given me a very loving life.”
And the funny man has this wise maxim to share: “Be thankful for your arms and legs; for food and friends. Be thankful that you are alive.”
To find out more about Patch Adams, log on to patchadams.org
By RASHVINJEET S.BEDI
sunday@thestar.com.my
http://thestaronline.com/news/story.asp?file=/2010/11/28/nation/7516986&sec=nation
Facts about Dr Patch Adams
>Dr Adams was born Hunter Doherty Adams in 1945, the second son of a school teacher mum and a US army major dad.
> When Dr Adams’ father died in the Korean war, the family returned home to Virginia and he was thrown into the social chaos centering on racism and war that marked the beginning of the 60s.
A sensitive teenager, he became disillusioned with a world where injustice and power seemed to have more value than love and compassion. Dr Adams didn’t want to live in that world, and after three attempted suicides, he was hospitalised in a locked ward of a mental asylum.
> In the mental hospital, Dr Adams made two decisions: to serve humanity through medicine, and to never have another bad day!
> After graduating from medical school, Dr Adams began the Gesundheit Institute with a group of 20 friends, including three doctors who moved into a six-bedroom home in West Virginia and opened it as a free hospital.
The hospital was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week for all manner of medical problems, from birth to death. It treated 500 to 1,000 patients each month, with five to 50 overnight guests a night. Over its 12-year history, 15,000 patients were treated. Dances, home-made plays, humour, gardening – these were the social glue that held the medical project together.
> While the young medical team in West Virginia saw that it needed to make US healthcare a more humane and fun interaction, it also saw the huge need overseas for the same.
Dr Adams and his friends, all young idealistic doctors, headed where the need was greatest: to be involved in changing the situations of poverty, illness and suffering faced by millions across the globe. This subsequently led to the involvement of many young Americans in programmes to bring aid across the globe.
Source: patchadams.org
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