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TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-09-12
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4kN-n7k_kc
good morning ladies and gentlemen it's great to be here with you today I love the ocean I make it unusual living messing about in boats on the only persons of road from America to England solo across the north Atlantic and a hundred and twenty four days I rode from Australia to New Zealand across the Tasman Sea and ninety six days alone more recently last summer I
led the first known kayak expedition from green lands to Scotland in an attempt to prove that the Inuit may have made that journey back in the seventeenth century but but last summer I sorry late last year on that I embarked upon what I hope will be the longest and greatest adventure of my life next slide please and the click of and that adventure was marriage to
my wife rose and look at and married my wife rose and the that life changing event gave me serious ports for thought growing up I had been hell bent on adventure it was that growing up I was hell bent on adventure I growing up I was hell bent on adventure can have the click it goes thank you sorry and I was a terror when the child
was a hell raiser I ran away from school to live in the woods I blew up our family kitchen making smoke bombs but the one subject that I loved the one thing I truly love was history and in particular the heroic age of exploration the time of Scott and Shackleton Manson and more sin men who were taking to exploring the uncharted ends of the earth setting
out to fill in the blanks on on that he's a man of vision and daring so the out into the unknown for years at a stretch full exploration science and simple curiosity when I was thirteen my father cutlass art school out of the times newspaper it was about a man named Peter bird he lost his life rowing solo across the north Atlantic across the north Pacific
Ocean this was the first time I'd ever heard about ocean rowing and immediately I was hooked I read everything I could find on the subject and very quickly my focus in life my sole focus might obsession from the age of thirteen became about rowing a new route alone across the north Atlantic to follow in the wake of my hero the late pizza but ten years later
age twenty three I finally achieve that dream I've now been taking on high risk adventures and expeditions full of for over fifteen years but last summer I step to for you don't stack had delivered us to the start of an expedition and the green land pack ice did I start to question my so called career choice I now have a family to consider was the risk
acceptable or even desirable any longer both for me and so my wife rose at around the same time I received a letter from a friend telling me that I needed to stop going on these expeditions please selfish crazy expeditions still wouldn't do these vanity seeking ego trips it was time to get a proper job settle down he even went so far as to say that the
real heroes stay at home and play golf well you can imagine I was pretty provoked by base I was provoked to the cool and I pray not worshipping heroes and adventurers of all kinds from Scott and Shackleton and Neil Armstrong Jackie stood alone Acosta and that was all I wanted to be I aspire to be like these people I've wanted to emulate these men and women
who had inhabited my dreams I'm none of them what go first so I was faced with a dilemma how can I reconcile my love for adventure all my life of adventure with its inherent risks and chances with my love and responsibility for my new wife rose and hopefully for our new family no I'm not the first to Ventura uncertainly when we've lost to come from the
style and the so we'll look to the past I don't have those adventurers who heads died in bed of old age or even to those who had perished in pursuit of their dreams but to those who had been left behind the parents widows and children what I wanted did they think so I started with Louis bird some of my first hero and inspiration Peter Byrd Louis
recently wrote himself from America to Hawaii and he had this to say about his father it's a deeply complex situation trying to understand peaches passion or as he called it addiction for ocean rowing I'm not staying at home with his family having now read the Pacific himself Louis understands a little better his father's in the conflict but Faludi over his father remains his hero I need
beds no resentment towards him for him he considers the personal cost to loved ones it's too high and he would run again Andrew McAleer the Australian Kaakha nine full redefining voyages had previously been considered impossible in a kayak his greatest achievement was to paddle from Australia to New Zealand across the Tasman Sea one of the roughest stretches of water on the planet tragically he was lost
within sight of his objective right on the cusp what I would call one of the bravest and greatest sea voyages of all time he left behind a wife Vicki and son fan Vicki reflecting on entries life said these are a few words that I'd like to say to my most wonderful man to have the courage to pursue your dreams and believe that anything is possible is
a rag gift you are a hero you live for adventure you've just had one incredible adventure this time and we will wait here all the way and you have taught me how to live some that son Finlay's now thirteen and already he is trapped in India in the pool and Switzerland he's already planning to climb the Matterhorn he recently gave a speech where he won the
competition for his talk on the importance of explorers and adventurers in the modern age he is very very proud at his dad Henry was knee was a soldier artist needle work experts and a polar explorer he lost his life skiing alone across Antarctica I met with his son Max because he is devastated to have lost his father and he longs to have spent more time with
him but T. home there's no sense of bitterness Matt said that was just him that was who he was and what he did there was no ceiling for him there were no limits he always tortoise that you must just keep pushing if anyone it stopped him or taken away that elements of his life it would have been like caging a wild animal the vigor would be
crushed spot going going back to the heroic age we find similar stories the iconic Amelia Earhart the first aviatrix to fly across the Atlantic and sadly later lost who disappeared trying to fly the longest route around the world she left behind her husband's fellow adventurer and promotes a Jewish Putnam addicted to risk fiercely independent and allowing nothing to block her life's path attributes that would drive
away many taught us but the Jewish problem that was part of the area looking back to Scott and Shackleton the great Antarctic explorers both of them lost in the far south Scott's Scott left behind a widow and did some pizza we can see from Kathleen's letters to Scott but she actively encouraged supported Scott's exploration despite the hardship and risk to both of them Shackleton left a
wife and three children his wife insisted that he be buried on the remote ends badly inhabited island of south Georgia indicating that she really well understood his need for the wild places what Jack London cooled the cool of the wild but don't be depressed by the stories on the country of course the families the bereavement is is devastating but for the rest of us they are
inspirational these free spirits who spent themselves in the pursuit of the not most daring they tried they strive towards a life truly lived none of the survivors wish that I loved ones had taken on because the Tate safe nine to five jobs or suppress their ambitions in fact the opposite they took solace from the facts from the drive and accomplishments of their loved ones and in
fact it was this sense of adventure was a big part of what they love and what had attracted them in the first place so to the question is the risk acceptable I must say it once it is not only acceptable it is vital it is crucial to the spirit and future of mankind that we continue to take risks and we continue to take risks big and
small in every field from business out of space it is through risk taking and exploration that we break breach new frontiers and we continue to progress otherwise we will stagnate and languish in a soup of complacency look why risk taking has got us the moon landing the Marianas trench the bottom of the ocean but more than that it was a first wrist take his the early
humans who just burst out of the caves and plains of Africa over two and a half million years ago some people take risks for human blood benevolence and progress like Neil Armstrong and others simply because it's that like the first ascent of Everest which had no real purpose other than perhaps to inspire mankind as the boundless potential of the human spirit it's poor Richard Burton had
different motivations of the glad just moments in human life me thinks is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands shaking off with one mighty effort fetters of habit the legend weights every team the cloak of many cats and the slavery of civilization man is once more happy strikes me now but we are in a dangerous state of slavery to civilization complacency is seeping in
we have advanced technologically so quickly that we feel we've arrived way ahead of the game new advances will be made through computers and machine learning well we can stay safely at home safely behind a glass screen or a drone with no we need or desire for physical or any other type of risk taking yet risk taking is innate in all of us some more than others
ghosts and and risk and adventure mean different things to different people some asked me scaling a mountain %HESITATION skiing to the polls and for others it is planting any variety of tomato in the greenhouse %HESITATION asking someone out on a date but the courage or the risk required is that of exposing yourself to failure so I am through you to encourage risk taking because can you
imagine a world where children didn't climb trees or no wheel climbed mountains what type the oceans it is through risk taking that we grow it is where we get beyond our comfort zones it is where we learn more about ourselves and others it is where we realize that there was more within us and we know remember that just because you go off piste it doesn't necessarily
mean that you will fall off a cliff several studies have shown that risk taking activities can create new neural pathways but can improve mental agility adaptation to change and accelerated learning life is short only seventy five years I'm a fifty of those most of you will be asleep and some of you will be staring at screens so time is running out you need to use it
well take more risks because a little risk is good feed Oscar Wilde said to live is the rarest thing in the world most people exist that is all so take more risks and seek to live not just exist take more risk and you will reap the rewards well off to all if you risk nothing then you risk everything it is only those who risk going to
