One Small Step For Mankind; One Giant Leap For Me

MY WISH

If I could have one wish

Just one

What would it be?

Wealth?

Power?

Or prestige?

One wish

Just one wish

I wish to be free

Free to be

The shaper

The controller

The creator

Of my own destiny

Free to be what ever I choose to be

No more trepidations

No more fears of what I may never be

That is my wish

To be the true me.

-1992-

ONE SMALL STEP FOR MANKIND; ONE LARGE STEP FOR ME

Have you ever dreamed of a great life journey but have never completed it…or even started it?

WHY?

Could it be that many times we become overwhelmed by the perceived complexity of such an adventure? Is the goal so high, the distance to great, and the financial cost so astronomical, are you beginning to get the point?

We fail because we quit before we even take the first step. We fear the ability to dream big dreams. We fear the prospect of failure. We live in fear, fear of living.

We spend so much time thinking about things that we never actually get anything done.

I have been fortunate to live a life that according to some of my friends and family, may be considered to be extraordinary. Maybe it is; maybe it isn’t. It is just simply my life. I don’t know any other way to live.

When I was 15 years old I decided that I wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps and become a Professional Firefighter. I then set out to make it happen. It is the most outlandish goal for a young teenager to begin moving in the direction of a career field that has an average hire age of 28 years old. I did not care about what my friends thought. Many told me I was crazy, most thought I was just dreaming.

The reality was that I just quietly put my head down and began to prepare myself for the opportunity so that I would be ready to take advantage of it when it presented itself.

By the age of 17 I was ready to begin. The door of opportunity was opened to me and without hesitation, I stepped through it and my first great life adventure was underway. One year later I was out of high school, my initial career training was completed and I was working and living my dream. That same year, I found myself on that rock with the injured child in my arms. The next and most profound journey of my life was about to begin. The struggle to claim and re-gain my faith. The discovery of who I am and why I am here.

Along the way I was fortunate to have some amazing experiences.

I spent four years working as a Police Officer. There is not another profession that will give you the experience of being a cop, lawyer, psychologist, marriage counselor, stunt driver, conflict resolution specialist, and with all that; be hated and despised by those you serve. It is a very difficult and bizarre paradox that you have to learn to live with. No one ever wants to see you until they want you and then no matter what you do you are screwed because in the end they will still hate you. I truly admire those who can survive an entire 20-year career in that profession. It is a tough and thankless road.

I was a partner in a very challenging entrepreneurial business. At 22 years old I met my best friend Keith. Keith is one of those rare individuals who is thinking and working beyond the horizon in his business. He is so far in front, that he is only pursued by the competition. He follows no one.

Keith and I owned a small company that manufactured a product designed to repair the massive public relations collateral damage done to the law enforcement community following the LAPD/Rodney King fiasco in the early 1990’s.

I had never owned a business. In fact, I still have not completed college. I learned business by doing, not by studying how others do. We had a company with no boundaries, we lived dangerously by just doing what we felt was right and to hell with what the conventional business world thought. It was a small agile business that operated like a Special Forces strike team. Think and act unconventionally, respond quickly and deliberately, make your own rules to meet the current challenge and succeed at all cost. It was a fantastic way to learn and we had a lot of fun and success doing it.

I trained and competed at the international level as an athlete. In 2001, I stumbled upon a great Olympic Archery Coach right in my own hometown and with very little persuasion; I began to train diligently in an attempt to make the 2004 United States Olympic Archery Team. Larry, my coach and I worked long and hard to take a 32 year old with no archery competition experience and build me up to a competitive level. From 2001-2004 I met and competed with Olympic Gold Medal winners, World Champions, National Champions from several countries, and I travelled extensively competing. I gave it everything I had physically, mentally, financially, and my wife made all those sacrifices along with me supporting one of the most improbable goals ever set. Zero to Olympics in four years.

Now here is where this particular journey really got interesting. I did not make the 2004 Olympic Team. I had some good tournament success and some bad. But I found something more precious than Olympic Gold. I discovered that it was the journey that mattered, not the destination.

I learned and grew so much as a person from the trials and tribulations of international competition. I learned and grew more from defeat than I ever did from victory.

I have spent almost all of my life training in various Japanese Martial Arts achieving several black belt ranks.My martial arts training began in very early childhood. My Grandfather was a black belt in Goju Ru Karate in the 1960’s when Japanese martial arts were new to the United States. My Father also trained in Goju Ryu Karate when I was very young. I am a third generation martial artist in my family.

I have studied Wa Do Ryu Karate, Muso Jikiden EIshin Ryu Iaido, AUSKF Kendo, and the Japanese Tea Ceremony of the Urasenke School. Martial arts taught me at a young age self-discipline and perseverance under extreme duress and struggle.

I have been a student of Japanese and Chinese ancient philosophy since my early teenage years. I spent several years studying and practicing Zen teachings and philosophy during my spiritual journey. It is my martial arts history that is the cornerstone of who I am and how I think.

The austere philosophy of the Samurai Warrior is a difficult path of life. It allows a type of total freedom that frees you from attachment to things, past experiences, and worry of the future. You must accept that it is only the moment you are in that you can influence. Your destiny lives on the razor edge of the sword. In less than a second your life will either end or move on. That freedom has a great price. It is earned though extreme training physically, mentally, philosophically, and morally.

I am still puzzled and frustrated that an entire lifetime of this training and I can’t seem to let go of the experience of August 18, 1986. That is one of life’s mysteries for me to understand at some later date.

I became a husband and father. What else can I say? For those who are married and have children you know, you just know. For those who do not, you will never know until you become a husband or wife and have kids. Then you will understand. Life is never the same once you begin this journey. It is beyond yourself, it is so immense that it becomes beyond measure. It is why I am here. To learn to love unconditionally, to make sacrifices, that to those outside this experience, are so great that it appears to be based on insanity. It is learning to place others above yourself and to find pure happiness in providing joy to others.

I became a retired firefighter. Retirement is awesome.

I retired at 39 years old. I work more and harder now than I did when I was working. I am not sure how that happened but I guess that is what you get when you retire with 3 kids under 10 years old, and start a new career.

I am now a commercial helicopter pilot. This is the most fun and fear you can have with your clothes on. (Flying a helicopter naked is not a smart way to do things, too many sharp spinning blades.) Learning to fly the helicopter is the most difficult skill I have ever attempted to learn. It is beyond extreme in both physical difficulty and mentally. When people come to our house and see the gigantic stack of textbooks and flight manuals they are amazed that a pilot has to know that much stuff.

I wish that every person could spend some time in the pilot’s seat of a helicopter. You learn very quickly that good decisions make life easy and poor decisions have immediate and sometimes irrecoverable consequences. The pilot has to have the ability to not only operate and fly the aircraft; he is the end of the line when it comes to decisions and consequences. You are totally responsible for everything that is going to happen from the minute you begin your pre-flight inspection until you are back on the ground and the blades stop spinning. Decisions both good and bad have rewards and consequences just like the rest of life. Good choices will save your life and bad ones will end it. Only one person to blame or take credit for failure or success. Yourself.

So there you have it. 15 years old to the present in a very compressed format. One of the most valuable lessons I have learned from not only the experiences mentioned here but many thousands upon thousands of others is that life is about taking some risk and recognizing opportunities for growth in all aspects of your life and reaching deep to find the courage to take hold of those opportunities.

I see life as a long hallway with many doors. Some are easy to open some take time and effort. They journey of life is not about what is at the end of the hallway. It is about opening doors and stepping though. Each door leads to another and another. It should never end. Some doors lead to physical adventure, some emotional, some spiritual, all are about growth. Just use caution, some open up to bad things that if pursued will lead to an out of control downward spiral. It all boils down to learning to make good decisions but it is tough.

I have stepped through many bad doors and have had to pay the consequences of those decisions. The reality is that I will step through many more. I just have to have enough faith in myself that I will recognize the good ones more than the bad.

I am choosing to live a life of adventure and growth and even with the hard hits I have had from not always making the best choices I have learned a lot about myself, my relationships with others, and my relationship with God.

Man, what a wild ride it has been and I hope it will be for a long time to come.