What a bike ride can teach you | Shimon Schocken | TEDxTelAviv

Computer science professor Shimon Schocken is also an avid mountain biker. To share the life lessons he learned while riding, he began an outdoor program with Israel's juvenile inmates and was touched by both their intense difficulties and profound successes.

Mountain biking in Israel

is something that I do with great passion

and commitment.

And when I'm on my bike,

I feel that I connect

with the profound beauty of Israel,

and I feel that I'm united

with this country's history

and biblical lore.

And also, for me,

biking is a matter of empowerment.

When I reach the summit

of a steep mountain
in the middle of nowhere,

I feel young,

invincible, eternal.

It's as if I'm connecting with some legacy

or with some energy

far greater than myself.

You can see my fellow riders

at the end of the picture,

looking at me with some concern.

And here is another picture of them.

Unfortunately, I cannot show their faces,

neither can I disclose their true names,

and that's because my fellow riders

are juvenile inmates, offenders

spending time in a correction facility

about 20 minutes' ride from here -

well, like everything in Israel.

And I've been riding
with these kids once a week,

every Tuesday, rain or shine,
for the last four years

and by now, they've become
a very big part of my life.

So that's the story I want to tell you.

This story began four years ago.

The correction facility
where they are locked up

happens to be right in the middle

of one of my biking trips,

and it's surrounded by barbed wires

and electric gates and armed guards.

One of these guards is actually
one of my students, also.

Everywhere I go,
I find one of my students.

So on one of these rides,

I talked my way into the compound

- you can understand how -

and went to see the warden.

I told the warden

that I wanted to start a mountain
biking club in this place

and that basically
I wanted to take the kids

from here to there.

And I told him, "Let's find a way

in which I'll be able to take out
10 kids once a week

to ride with in the summer
in the country."

And the warden was quite amused,

and he told me he thought that I was a nut

and he told me,

"This place is a correction facility.
These guys are serious offenders.

They are supposed to be locked up.

They aren't supposed to be out at large."

And yet, we began to talk about it,

and one thing led to another.

And I can't see myself

going into a state prison in New Jersey

and making such a proposition,

but this being Israel,

the warden somehow made it happen.

And so two months later,

we found ourselves "at large" -
myself,

10 juvenile inmates

and a wonderful fellow named Russ,

who became a very good friend of mine

and my partner in this project.

And in the next few weeks,
I had the tremendous pleasure

of introducing these kids

to the world of total freedom,

a world consisting of magnificent vistas

like these -

everything you see here
is obviously in Israel -

as well as close encounters

with all sorts of small creatures

coming in all sorts of sizes,

colors, shapes, forms and so on.

In spite of all this splendor,

the beginning was extremely frustrating.

Every small obstacle, every slight uphill,

would cause these fellows

to stop in their tracks and give up.

So we had a lot of this going on.

I found out that they had a very hard time

dealing with frustration
and difficulties -

not because they were physically unfit.

But that's one reason why
they ended up where they were.

And I became increasingly
more and more agitated,

because I was there

not only to be with them,

but also to ride and create a team

and I didn't know what to do.

Now, let me give you an example.

We're going downhill
in some rocky terrain,

and the front tire of Alex

gets caught in one of these
crevasses here.

So he crashes down,

and he gets slightly injured,

but this does not prevent
him from jumping up

and then starting to jump
up and down on his bike

and curse violently.

Then he throws his helmet in the air.

His backpack goes ballistic
in some other direction.

And then he runs to the nearest tree

and starts to break branches
and throw rocks

and curse like I've never heard.

And I'm just standing there,

watching this scene

with a complete disbelief,

not knowing what to do.

I'm used to algorithms and data structures

and super motivated students,

and nothing in my background

prepared me to deal

with a raging, violent adolescent

in the middle of nowhere.

And you have to realize
that these incidents

did not happen in convenient locations.

They happened in places like this,

in the Judean Desert,

20 kilometers away from the nearest road.

And what you don't see in this picture

is that somewhere
between these riders there,

there's a teenager sitting on a rock,

saying, "I'm not moving from here.
Forget it.

I've had it."

Well, that's a problem

because one way or another,
you have to get this guy moving

because it's getting dark soon
and dangerous.

It took me several such incidents
to figure out what I was supposed to do.

At the beginning, it was a disaster.

I tried harsh words and threats

and they took me nowhere.

That's what they had all their lives.

And at some point I found out,

when a kid like this gets into a fit,

the best thing that you can possibly do

is stay as close as possible to this kid,

which is difficult,

because what you really want to do
is go away.

But that's what he had all his life,

people walking away from him.

So what you have to do is stay close

and try to reach in and pet his shoulder

or give him a piece of chocolate.

So I would say, "Alex, I know
that it's terribly difficult.

Why don't you rest for a few minutes

and then we'll go on."

"Go away you maniac, psychopath.

Why would you bring us
to this goddamn place?"

And I would say, "Relax, Alex.

Here's a piece of chocolate."

And Alex would go, "Arrrrggg!"

Because you have to understand

that on these rides
we are constantly hungry -

and after the rides also.

And who is this guy, Alex, to begin with?

He's a 17-year-old.

When he was eight,

someone put him on a boat in Odessa

and sent him, shipped him to Israel

on his own.

And he ended up in south Tel Aviv

and did not have the good luck

to be picked up by Karen Tal,

and roamed the streets

and became a prominent gang member.

And he spent the last 10 years of his life

in two places only,

the slums and the state prison,

where he spent the last two years

before he ended up sitting
on this rock there.

And so this kid was probably abused,

abandoned, ignored, betrayed

by almost every adult along the way.

So, for such a kid,

when an adult that he learns
to respect stays close to him

and doesn't walk away from him

in any situation,

irrespective of how he behaves,

it's a tremendous healing experience.

It's an act of unconditional acceptance,

something that he never had.

And so I found out that's the way
to actually get close to them.

Just to be as close as you possibly can,

as close as you physically can

around this whirlpool of flying objects
that sometimes surrounds them.

I want to say a few words about vision.

When I started this program
four years ago,

I had this original plan

of creating a team of winning underdogs.

I had an image of Lance Armstrong

in my mind.

And it took me exactly two months

of complete frustration

to realize that this vision was misplaced,

and that there was another vision

supremely more important

and more readily available.

I have to tell you,
I met Hedy Schleifer almost 20 years ago,

and became a great fan of her
and an avid student of Hedy

and I think I learned
a few things from her.

It all of a sudden dawned on me,
in this project,

that the purpose of these rides

should actually be to expose the kids

to one thing only: love.

Love to the country, to the uphill

and the downhill,

to all the incredible
creatures that surround us -

the animals, the plants, the insects -

love and respect

to other fellow members in your team,

in your biking team, and most importantly,

love and respect to yourself,

which is something that they badly miss.

Together with the kids -

you know, we went through
all sorts of exciting experiences.

And, you know, in mountain biking,

it's very simple to develop self-esteem.

Just look at this picture here.

Which was taken, by the way, by Ran Navok

in one of our mutual rides.

This is Ein Akev,

the cliff above Ein Akev,

I [went] there two weeks ago,
with the kinds.

And it was full of water,
we swam, it was great.

I found out

that what I really had to do
with the kids, once again,

is to take them
to all these spectacular places

and share with them the love
that I and other bikers have

for the country.

Together with the kids,

I also went through a remarkable
transformation.

You know, I come from a cutthroat world

of science and high technology.

I used to think that reason and logic

and relentless drive

were the only ways to make things happen.

And before I worked with the kids,

anything that I did with them,

or anything that I did with myself,

was supposed to be perfect,

ideal, optimal,

but after working with them for some time,

I discovered the great virtues of empathy

and flexibility

and being able to start with some vision,

and if the vision doesn't work,
well nothing happened.

All you have to do is play with it,
change it a little bit,

and come up with something
that does help, that does work.

So right now, I feel more

like these are my principles,

and if you don't like them, I have others.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

And one of these principles is focus.

Before each ride

we sit together with the kids,

and we give them one word

to think about during the ride.

You have to focus
their attention on something

because so many things happen.

So these are words like "teamwork"

or "endurance"

or even complicated concepts

like "resource allocation"

or "perspective," a word
that they don't understand.

You know, perspective

is one of these critically important

life-coping strategies

that mountain biking can really teach you.

I tell the kids

when they struggle through some uphill

and feel like they cannot take it anymore,

it really helps to ignore
the immediate obstacles

and raise your head and look around

and see how the vista around you grows.

It literally propels you upwards.

That's what perspective is all about.

Or you can also look back in time

and realize that you've already conquered

steeper mountains before.

And that's how they develop self-esteem.

Now, let me give you
an example of how it works.

You stand with your bike
at the beginning of February.

It's very cold, and you're standing
in one of these rainy days,

and it's drizzling and cold and chilly,

and you're standing in,
let's say, Yokneam.

And you look up at the sky
through a hole in the clouds

you see the monastery
at the top of the Muhraka -

that's where
you're supposed to climb now -

and you say, "There's no way
that I could possibly get there."

And yet, two hours later

you find yourself standing
on the roof of this monastery,

smeared with mud, blood and sweat.

And you look down at Yokneam;

everything is so small and tiny.

And you say, "Hey, Alex. Look at this
parking lot where we started.

It's that big.

I can't believe that I did it."

And that's the point

when you start loving yourself.

And so we talked about

these special words that we teach them.

And at the end of each ride,
we sit together

and share moments

in which those special words of the day

popped up and made a difference,

and these discussions

can be extremely inspiring.

In one of them, one of the kids once said,

"When we were riding on this ridge

overlooking the Dead Sea -

and he's talking about this spot here -

"I was reminded

of the day when I left
my village in Ethiopia

and went away together with my brother.

We walked 120 kilometers

until we reached Sudan.

This was the first place where
we got some water and supplies."

And he goes on saying,
and everyone looks at him like a hero,

probably for the first time in his life.

And he says - because I also
have volunteers riding with me,

adults, who are sitting there

listening to him -

and he says, "And this
was just the beginning

of our ordeal until we ended up in Israel.

And only now," he says,

"I'm beginning to understand where I am,

and I actually like it."

Now I remember, when he said it,

I felt goosebumps on my body,

because he said it overlooking the Moab
Mountains here in the background.

That's where Joshua descended

and crossed the Jordan

and led the people of Israel
into the land of Canaan

3,000 years ago in this final leg

of the journey from Africa.

And so, perspective

and context and history play key roles

in the way I plan my rides with the kids.

We visit Kibbutzim

that were established
by Holocaust survivors.

We explore ruins of Palestinian villages,

and we discuss how they became ruins.

And we go through numerous remnants

of Jewish settlements,
Nabatic settlements,

Canaanite settlements -

three-, four, five-thousand years old.

And through this tapestry,

which is the history of this country,

the kids acquire

what is probably the most important
value in education,

and that is the understanding
that life is complex,

and there's no black and white.

And by appreciating complexity,

they become more tolerant,

and tolerance leads to hope.

I ride with these kids once a week,

every Tuesday.

Here's a picture I took last
Tuesday - less than a week ago -

this is in Nahal Zin, I stayed up,

asked them to go down
and took this picture,

and I ride with them tomorrow also,

which is also a Tuesday, and tomorrow
some of you guys are going to join me.

So it's going to be a mixed ride
of juvenile inmates

and TEDx guests.

And it's going to be
the experience of your lifetime.

In every one of these rides

I always end up standing
in one of these incredible locations,

taking in this incredible
landscape around me,

and I feel blessed and fortunate

that I'm alive,

and that I sense every fiber

in my aching body.

And I feel blessed and fortunate

that 15 years ago

I had the courage to resign

my tenured position at NYU

and return to my home country

where I can do these incredible rides

with this group of troubled kids

coming from Ethiopia

and Morocco and Russia.

And I feel blessed and fortunate

that every week, every Tuesday -

and actually every Friday also -

I can once again celebrate

in the marrow of my bones

the very essence of living
in Israel on the edge.

Thank you.

(Applause)