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Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-08-31
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOxjf0jIL7E
yeah the suit right so what am I doing why am I standing here in a puncture resistant bright yellow search and rescue tries to and there's a lot of reasons and probably we need a psychiatrist to get to some of them I'm gonna talk about some of the other ones today so that the title of my talk is finding and surviving your calling I'm not a
scientist but I've done some field research in this area on myself so I'm gonna share what I found out there and I would hope that helps anyone of you we're here today who ever see this and I'm bracing myself now for the ridicule I will get from my two teenage daughters when they see this online cellum Christopher I'm forty nine years old on the clean water
advocate on the human rights advocate and the way that plays out as a swim the entire length of dirty waterways and some of them you probably heard of I was the first person in history to swim the entire length of the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest one thousand two hundred forty three mile swim that sounds thank you that's more hands than were clapping when I
finish that's when that's what they don't tell you the loneliness and the smells I swim the entire length of the Hudson River in New York state you don't have to clap released three hundred fifteen miles entire length of Lake Champlain which squeezes up between New York and Vermont into quit back hundred twenty nine miles on a non I think the point is you know if you
went and read about me you know like I own more than three thousand miles and more than twenty five polluted water ways somebody should have availed themselves of the free counseling at the college when they were there right one of the things that I want to try to do today is get to what's underneath this to and %HESITATION I think this suit is fun right in
Brooklyn they call me the toxic Avenger because I swam through the toxic sludge of the Kawada scan Allen this thing and no one else ever had and there's a good reason no one else ever had right because no one else wants swim through oil slicks and gasoline and chemical spills and trash and yes that's what you think it is dots raw sewage and yes I've swum
through it and would you would you like a fun fact about what it's like to swim through rustlers okay I heard one yes think of this as this dude told me about it so now I don't have to do it myself so when you're swimming through sewage yes you know it when you smell it it feels a little sticky and weird in the water and the
water color changes so the smell you recognize here's which you don't know because you don't do this its recent enough you can smell foods that the people eight who made the sewage so you'll be swimming along alike to why snow poop O. now and then I think I smell nachos and oranges so it takes a couple minutes to swim out of the slick of sewage but
it takes like five years for you'll will grab a handful of nachos again that's what it's like out there so I have some do all kinds of stuff radioactive waste narrow toxic pesticides I've been stung by jellyfish I've been menaced by a great white sharks I've been attacked by blood sucking sea lamprey eels which is really bad if you're afraid of snakes because then you have
dreams about that so to try that there's other issues out there to ride in an egg carton lightning storms in blizzards I get run over by boats I've been hit by trees and branches that are inside storm waves that I swim through because somehow I want to swim in the storm because I'm one of those guys like I want to know I want to know what
it's like I know what it's like now it's like my head hurts because I just got hit by a three but somehow I want to keep going and then that's what it comes down to write why am I doing this why do I want to keep going I don't have the whole answer to that question and I'll leave it to others to try to answer it
but I'll give you my answer that question the reason I keep going is because it's my calling here's what a calling feels like it feels like the thing you can't not do it feels like the love affair that your gonna do you even though you know it's gonna blow up your life it feels like you couldn't die satisfied you would not be okay unless you do
this and sometimes it also feels like getting dragged across the coals if you're calling are dragged behind a pickup truck of your calling or you're calling since the saddle in its riding you why do we do it I know I do it love I love the water I want it to be clean I know another reason I do it vanity yeah I want people to like
me I want my daughters to know that I tried I want the students I talked to in schools to think well at least you didn't just tell us to do something I mean maybe as issues but definitely out there doing something I want to put my body in the way of harm not because I wanna harm my body because I don't but she now and getting
older and forty nine now member in your twenties you're like yeah whatever man no different now I am willing to put my life on the line because I have a calling I had the thing that I must do and that is a gift but let me tell you if you find your calling you are in for a ride it is excruciatingly hard to have a calling
it is and not for the faint of heart it is not the other thing I feel like I've got to tell you is that most of my toxin most of the talk about people like me who go do extreme things I mean they're not all doing it to energize cleanups of dirty water ways but focuses on the external stuff right it's the external story are looking
to suit look at his goggles look at his cap while cool team nice boats great spreadsheet describing the budget that we're going to go over for this project right all the trappings if you want to be a change agent if you wanna find your agency and to me agency means your ability to gather yourself find your power to get something done accomplishes your ability to stand
out in your own skin find your voice and do things if you want to gather that you need access to every bit of energy in your being and here's the tricky part here's the part of the talk I don't want to give that means you have to admit to this stuff inside you that you're hiding from and that you are hiding from other people because you've
got energy tied up in that you are going to need all of the energy you have if you're gonna do purpose driven work so that means really it's not about the suit you want to be a change agent you want to change the world make a difference make your offering reach full flower V. decent gentlemen that is an inside job which is why we got to
take the suit off really and which is why and I hate doing this too I'm gonna ask for help would you please help me take off my suit I hate husking for help you know what's worse in asking for help receiving help right I'm gonna try though so while we're doing this I mean to say that the question you can do it member the self talk
you can do it you got this all right now help me get this arm out so the major question you're gonna have to ask yourself if you want to do the deep dive if you want hang on it's given something to look at who are you you think about who you are well I'm fighting with my costume okay orders there okay so maybe going inside isn't
worth can even use this arm now ha just thinking of how many times I'm gonna be teased about this makes me want to cry okay get on with it you wonder who you are this is the least of your familiar Asians what you're witnessing right here but let's get down to it what do you want I don't mean we gonna tell other people you want I
mean what do you want that you don't tell other people so going a little journey with me for a second here I'm gonna tell you a little bit what I want so when I was young and I was twenty you know what I want to do kickass but it really know what that meant that's what I wanted to do that was my plan full fully fledged
plan so that you know work in progress I have a better sense of what I want now now in this was confirmed because I was part of a cohort of people extreme athletes that outside magazine studied several years ago and we had to between us we did all kinds of things like M. R. I.'s neurological exams emotional surveys they're trying to figure out why we do
what we do you in my case what would possess someone to swim in freezing water in a blizzard this kind of thing I was the only one it turned out who wasn't doing it for the adrenaline hit who wasn't a risk taker seems weird because most people think I'm a risk taker I was after an experience of one ness and I was kind of shocked that
they figured this out because I'd always known that about myself but in like to talk about it but my best days in the water there is no separation I can feel between the water and me I am the river I AM the ocean usually doesn't last that long you get a few minutes of it or twenty minutes of it and then nothing but a slog for
like two years ninety get it again but if I'm out there swimming in a blizzard in the river you know what I want I want to be part of the river I want to be part of blizzard I want to know what it's like to be river and blizzard I wanna be connected to everything that's what I'm going for that's the drug I'm seeking the other
thing I want and this is hard to say is I want my voice heard I want to speak up for the stuff I want to speak up for and I want people to hear it and I want to do it in a public way and it's not sometimes cool to say that I'm not saying I want to be famous I wouldn't wish that on me her
anybody I'm saying I want to stand up in front of people and say what's in my heart to say about the experiences I've had out there in the water and sometimes that's awkward to admit to but I'm telling you guys to do that stuff so I gotta stand up here and do it but what about you what do you guys want I'm asking going quick journey
with me hello I ask you all to take a deep breath and and out and I'm ask you please to close your eyes for a moment and just listen to my voice move back into your body for a second feel the chair pushing on you clothes on your skin the temperature of the room feel your breath going in and out if you're quiet enough you probably
feel your heart beat put your awareness on your heart keep it there and I ask you something imagine you could do any work for the world anything and that this work would be the work that would make you feel okay about your life's on it would be the work did it for you satisfied you thing that if you did it you'd be good and now imagine
you'll have all the financial support you need your friends your family and your loved ones we'll offer you their full support all the logistical hurdles all the challenges it's gonna work out you're gonna meet all those challenges take a look at what that work looks like for you and mark how it feels to get that glimpse and now please no that you can go back there
and follow that thread anytime but right now a mask you to come back to me in this room welcome back so does your desires or glance you also got to deal with their history this can be rough to so that's me when I was four years old and you can get something from this here's a good story about my history that four year old loves the
water little Christopher loves the beach he is routinely screamed out at the end of the day by his relatives not because he did something bad but because he refuses to get out of the water he loves the water so to paraphrase what Peter Jennings did when he summed up my life this is a childhood passion that became a life's mission yes that's true here's what's also
true there's things about me you don't know and that I feel comfortable keeping from you there's difficult things that have happened all of us and those difficult things some of them leave a mark leave wounds that means there's a charge on them and that means you have energy tied up in protecting yourself from going to those places and when I'm here to tell you is you
gotta go there and except those parts of you if you're gonna go out there and do this work some not gonna get into all my childhood damage we all got damaged our child that somehow right but I will say this without his glasses the kid in the picture or me now without my contact lenses I'm legally blind I've never told an audience this before my vision
is less than twenty four hundred uncorrected I can't see anything so as a bully target in school and elementary school I was perfect knocked my glasses off beat me down right that's not fun at the time but later when you think back on the daily beatings you know on the playground and in the locker room for Jamie think yeah getting run over by a boats bad
and yeah getting hit in the head by logs ensign storm waves is bad but you know what I've been there I've been I can take a beating so you need to find that piece of you that can harness your history and then you gotta find a way forward in the tricky bit about finding a way forward in this work is that it's gonna go differently for
everybody but I can tell you a couple things you were gonna have to leave behind what you know you're gonna have to literally or figuratively kiss your family goodbye cross the threshold remember your Joseph Campbell go out into the world you're gonna have to take a first step if you want to do this work and that means you're gonna leave what you know and then you're
gonna run into stuff out in the world and some of the stuff you run into is going to be really confronting you're gonna feel afraid you're gonna feel alone and in that place I think it's worth saying a practice of faith can help you I'm not saying I believe in god I'm not here to have religious discussion I'm not a religious person but I'm a person
of faith what do I mean here the kinds of faith I have one kind is faith in me I have been through some stuff and I am still here the important part about that same thing is true all of you listening you are still here you are a survivor you have been through some of you unbelievable fakes and you are still here in your skin if