The treasure that you seek is in the cave you fear to enter.
Joseph Campbell.
Travelling for me has always been about seeking adventure. I am not one to sit by the pool for days on end. I need to go exploring places I have never been, to find things I have never seen. It is always what is around the next corner, over the next hill.
In 1986 when I was 26yo, I took off on my motorbike for a three month trip around Australia. It ended up being a six year odyssey with everything I owned on my bike. I would get to a T-intersection and toss a coin for the direction I would take. Eventually it was no longer a holiday but my way of life, one adventure after another, as a free spirit and I loved it.
Fast forward to 2017 I was going through a divorce after being a step dad for 10 years and my world fell apart. What was originally a fantastic 6 year “I could do no wrong” relationship living separately before marriage, had become a toxic relationship after marriage that was killing me slowly by 1000 tiny criticisms, where everything I did was now not good enough.
I married and divorced my wife for exactly the same reason, because of the way I was treated. It was very confusing because most of my marriage was fantastic and I didn’t want to divorce the kids I helped raise, but I had to leave.
Ploughing into suicidal depression I had a breakdown. I sought the one thing that I knew would help, travel. Seeking the answers by exploring places I had never been. I headed to Cambodia, grabbed a motorbike and went seeking adventure abseiling and caving. While it was a much needed breath of fresh air, I would plunge deeper into depression when thinking about what I had lost. Me.
Leaving meant my whole identity as a business owner, husband, stepdad, dog owner, home owner etc all gone. I didn’t know who I was and more importantly I didn’t know who I wanted to become. I was desperately hanging onto the old me, too scared to let go. Trying to solve the unsolvable problem. Psychologically and metaphorically trying to put back together the jigsaw puzzle of my life that was now on the floor in a 1000 pieces all of which had turned black. Humpty Dumpty was on the ground and in a mess. Abseiling into dark caves in Cambodia was a good metaphor for the inward journey I was going on.
Two months into my journey of confusion, the universe said I wasn’t doing it hard enough and gave me a heart attack as well in the countryside north of Kampot. There ensued an 8 hour long heart attack played out as a black comedy to get to hospital, starting with getting back onto the motorbike in the middle of nowhere and riding the twenty kilometres to town.
Travelling alone is always open to some danger but this was different. Foreign country, language issues and a heart attack while riding a motorbike in the middle of nowhere.
My logic mind kicked in and slowed everything down so my focus was only about getting back to my lodge where the managers were a young English couple. Riding very slowly in excruciating pain hoping I didn’t pass out as I made my way back to the lodge which took about an hour. I parked my motorbike in the foyer, because I was so weak with pain by now.
Upon my arrival the young Cambodian receptionist was frightened by my arrival and the fact I was now lying on the floor in extreme pain. In broken and panicked English she informed me the owners were on their day off. Perfect timing.
Thankfully they liked a drink and the pub was next door. The receptionist ran next door and brought them back. They had spent their entire day off at the pub from the moment it opened and it showed. Slurring and staggering they immediately assessed my situation and dragged me outside to a tuk tuk. Laying in the floor well, head out one side, feet out the other while two very drunk people were slurring panicked orders to the driver. Racing across town we arrived at the doctors with a “Closed” sign on the door. Turning around we went back passed the lodge to the other side of town and found a medical place with a couple of beds and nothing else. No medical equipment except morphine.
With my mind still in logic mode I handed my phone to the drunk pommie to go and find a phone signal back in town and ring my friend Mick. My logical brain knew that Mick was on the west coast in Perth and would be awake because of the time zones. My family were east coast and asleep. Mick answered and just happened to be sitting down to dinner with a friend who was married to a Cambodian, I had an interpreter.
Very quickly they worked out it was definitely a heart issue and organised an ambulance to Phnom Penh, a 3 hour trip. Loading me into the ambulance, they hadn’t strapped me in and it jammed and I slid off and into a steel seat frame hitting my head. Eventually we made it to Phnom Penh in 2.5 hours at night.
Upon my arrival the woman in Perth had organised for her brother Heng, to be at the hospital to help organise things, Mick in Perth contacted my travel insurance and they rang my phone just as I arrived at the hospital, only to inform me they would not pay for any medical because they didn’t believe me when I ticked the box that I had no prior heart condition. It was Friday in Australia and my doctor had already gone home so the insurance company said I had to wait til Monday before they would confirm my status and pay for the medical. I informed them I was having a heart attack and thanks for the extra stress.
Heng my new Cambodian friend then went and withdrew $3500 US to pay for my treatment so the doctors could operate to remove the blockage. He then sat by my bedside the whole weekend, sleeping in a chair next to my bed until the insurance company could confirm with my doctor on the Monday and the approve the treatment. Too little too late.
I was then flown to Bangkok to have a stent inserted and stayed in 7 star luxury hospital and my first bath in 3 days. A sponge bath but at least I was clean.
Mick arrived from Perth to oversee things and brought with him a copy of the Australian newspaper from the plane. The wrap around on the paper was full of the obituaries of Bill Leak the cartoonist from “The Australian” who had a heart attack on the same day I had mine.
Bill was inspirational and his job as a satirical cartoonist was to provoke comment in the community. A job he did extremely well. You either loved him or hated him but he challenged the norm, he inspired thought provoking conversations.
He made a difference. I was suicidal.
Why him and not me?
Trying to survive the heart attack clearly showed me that I didn’t really want to die, I just had no idea how to live. Reading all of the obituaries of someone who made an impact and inspired change showed me how to live my life.
Over the next couple of years I took every course I could that challenged my thinking and forced me to think differently. Initially I was trying to rebuild the broken jigsaw puzzle but realised that I had to create a new version. The biggest and greatest revelation for me came when I tried to work out the four corners as my pillars of principles for how I wanted to live. I was creating another fixed image of what life should be of the neat four-sided, everything in its place, life.
I reversed the image in my mind and placed the four foundational cornerstones that my new life was going live by at the very centre of my vision. Authenticity, Trust, Passion and Self Care. I no longer have a finite view of what my life should be but an outwardly expanding jigsaw puzzle where I constantly add new adventures and grow infinitely, creating an impact and inspiring others.
Since returning home, my own journey inspired me to write the first book of a trilogy based on the 12 stages of the hero’s journey called “Iam Awesome, Who are you?” about a little boy called Iam Awesome who has to learn to believe in who he sees in the mirror.
The hero’s journey is the journey we are all born on and it is our choice to become the hero or stay safe in sameness of the everyday life, and not grow. That fixed image jigsaw that I used to have.
I am on my own hero’s journey and challenged myself to raise $1Million for kids charities with my book.
Embarking on my adventure I was focused on everything I lost that I thought mattered. By learning to believe in who I saw in the mirror is the ultimate adventure journey, the hero’s journey, I learnt what matters most.
I matter, my dreams matter and life matters.
Having a heart attack while struggling with suicidal depression was a gift, which showed me how we are surrounded by love when you have a heart attack and we are surrounded by aloneness in depression. I give keynote presentations on my journey and the lessons learned on this journey to becoming my own hero.
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