登山 | 冒險 【傳奇！第一位登頂珠峰的盲人——Erik Weihenmayer 演講】登山運動 埃里克·魏亨麥爾 極限運動 珠穆朗瑪峰

Thank you so much everyone wow this is cool A lot of energy A lot of stomping I love that And so that was really nice intro But most people are just interested in my dog Yeah of course I was coming in and passing some folks in the lobby And they're like look at that amazing dog man's best friend what a noble creature Wow look at him work I love your dog And then I'm walking away and I heard I think that guy climbed Everest blind So I'm used to taking a backseat I did it back in BC I did it I've been doing it always this guy's awesome he's my fourth dog And he's gonna Fall asleep now When I first was doing a talk actually I was sitting in the second front row Going up on stage these two guys were sitting in front of me they didn't know I was the speaker One guy turns to his friend he goes I hope this guy isn't boring And his friend whispers back well if he is you know he's blind we can just walk out he won't know the difference So So since then I trained the dog To attack anyone who makes any sudden movements Towards the door Feel free to use the bathroom You can outrun him No he's not a he's a lover he'll be asleep in a second as I said So yeah I'm a graduate of BC this is my alma mater it's so exciting to be back here Gosh I love it I mean First of all I should say that like you know I didn't even hardly recognize some of the campus because there's been so much change in the last 25 years I used to run tours To all the prospective students and And but but now I'm like just Like there's so much new stuff And the infrastructure has strengthened BC for sure But what I'm most impressed by Is that I when I was here I thought it was a very strong community that's one of the things That drew me to this College But now 25 years later The community is even stronger And right here just all of you together Connecting in this way is a wonderful testament to the strength of your community so Thanks for letting me be a part of it I've kept a couple things From my BC experience the scar here I was coming home from a party and I was running full blast across the dust bowl And my dog didn't look up and there was a sign And I blasted into that thing I flew back on my back I was Blood pouring down my face You know I know we're here to talk about faith I certainly didn't find it at 2 in the morning running across the dust bowl But it is it was it was a great testament to the medical Facilities here I was They patch me right up and got me right back to class So But thank you for having me back and So so speaking of blind climbing I might as well might as well start there because In 2001 some of you know That I had the privilege of climbing Mount Everest and that was so exciting you know but It's hard to because you're climbing up What's through the Kumbu Icefall The Kumbu Icefall About 3000 feet of jumbled up boulders of ice Of every size imaginable from skyscrapers down to baseballs Collapsing exploding down the mountain like a river of ice it doesn't meet Americans with Disability Act standards And And then climbing through that and then the ladders Four five ladders lashed together with Sherpa You know Kmart boat twine You gotta get across these things quickly and safely Getting to that first ladder I wanted to crawl You know but the Sherpas will count you out if you crawl So you gotta walk boldly across these ladders In fact They're really deep too You know the Sherpas say That that if you if you fall into one of these crevasses you wind up In Boston College So They're really deep and Chris Morris one of my team members said you know You think you have it so hard but that's sighted people we get To look down Through the rungs So maybe you have it easy And then climbing Up through that icefall 10 times And up The Lhotse face and up the Geneva Spur Across the knife edge There's a 12,000 foot drop on that side there's a 9,000 foot drop on that side Doesn't really matter which side you fall off of Just climbing keeping your mind Still Climbing the Hillary step Near the top taking six breaths between each step Six breaths Reach the summit you're standing on an island Like the size of a single car garage in the sky You can't believe you're there You literally your brain has not caught up to your body And then you come down The real work happens as you come down I'm coming down the mountain I was really exhausted Your legs are like stretched So many Like a rubber band that's been stretched too many times there's wind burn on top of sunburn On your face you're You're breathing so hard that your tongue is hanging out of your mouth and the sun Reflects off the snow and bounces up in your tongue and it burns your tongue And so you have sunburn on your tongue it's swollen up and you can't talk And I got down through the icefall That last time and I knew I was safe I knew I was gonna live I was So happy Celebrating PV Our team leader This amazing leader He brought us all together and he said congratulations Your lives are about to change in lots of ways and then he pulled me aside And you know I thought he was gonna like have me sign his t-shirt or something And he said Eric He said do me a favor Don't let this mountain Don't let Everest Be the greatest thing you ever do And I thought PV That's really bad timing You know most people are just dreaming About food and About the comforts of home I was dreaming of a nice smooth sidewalk Just give me a sidewalk that I can walk down and it won't kill me And And so I thought about what PV was saying Like was he saying like just keep doing harder and harder things riskier and riskier things keep trying to top yourself You know Take a cooler Facebook picture I didn't know what he meant And so I just went on this sort of storm of Energy moving me forward Lots of celebration you know where do you go after you climb Everest Got to climb The Matterhorn with Mickey And Goofy And And and tried some new sports You gotta gotta keep your mind open To some new Sports We Are you looking at what I'm not looking at back there Are we having some technical difficulties Oh yeah so the new sport Next Picture Yeah all right well anyway that one didn't show up but it was It's me riding an ostrich I'm not sure why But those some of those sports didn't work out But But I was I had started a fledgling organization at that time Called no barriers and And we were just testing out some ideas and we were We were going I'd taken a team of disabled kids down the Grand Canyon We were rafting a big 30-foot rafts And I was so intrigued So I'd climbed lots of mountains I'd Climb the seven summits the tallest mountain In every continent But I was really intrigued by rivers By The this incredible canyon Of the Grand Canyon incredible natural beauty whether you can see it or not You know you can hear the echo Of the walls above you The vibration Of sound off those walls And The river being the gauntlet to some of the most incredible whitewater in the world And then That the energy of rivers though was really fascinating to me And I wanted to understand If I could ever flourish in that kind of environment that was so incredibly different from A mountain And I thought if I was going to experience that I'd wanted to do it close up You know not in a big giant raft but Down right against the water At the surface In a kayak And so that began A Six-year journey To begin to learn to whitewater kayak And so At 40 years old I found myself on the banks of the Colorado River thinking you know I climbed Everest Why am I so scared I am so scared I'm just Listening to the roar the river below me And You know I just feel overwhelmed Um And How does a blind person kayak well there was lots of things to figure out along the way How my team would communicate with me Um how Um They would communicate And I would be even able to hear them through the Through the roar of the river sometimes separated by waves that were 10 20 feet tall And we Sort of stumbled upon this amazing technology this Bluetooth technology That communicates in real time So that my friends can be behind me yelling Very precise directions You know you know that if you're a foot to the left or a foot too far to the right the difference between getting to that rapid and getting Hammered But anyway how does a blind person learn to kayak check this out this will answer some of it You can hear this Really deep roar Not being able to see it It's almost Well maybe it's more intimidating than being able to see it It's shifting it's changing directions It's tossing you side to side unexpectedly And you're trying to bust through that totally chaotic environment Just by the sound of your guide's voice By the sound of the river And by what you're feeling under your boat I've worked hard I put in hundreds of hours of repetition Only to get smacked down Flipped over Pull my skirt And there I am Swimming again One of the biggest challenges has been how to deal with fear Not to let it paralyze me Crush my confidence Because every run Even if it's down the same rapid It's totally different And when one thing goes wrong and it often does It's a cascading series of things going even worse I'm trying to respond to all that It's like Sensory overload There were days that I get off the river you know after that You know that thousands of hours of training of Sort of flailing and Bleeding slamming into rocks pulling The skirt of my kayak and swimming Through these rapids I get out of the river and I'd be sitting on the banks and I'd say OK I gotta keep it positive What did I learn today I learned Why there aren't That many blind kayakers in the world But I had that purpose of Hopefully Having this audacious goal to kayak the Grand Canyon You know As the inspirational blind guy I guess Maybe I'm not supposed to say this But I sort of hate when people tell me anything is possible Because I think like Have you kayaked blind lately Like there's A lot of challenges You know forget mountains and rivers think about all the barriers In your lives You know just Waking up and getting to class and On the sports field in the classroom All the challenge of trying to balance your life of trying to find purpose Trying to push against these Big forces That want to knock you flat on your back as you try to live a life that matters I wrote my second book was this Book I teamed up with It was called the Adversity Advantage I teamed up with the scientist Dr. Paul Stoltz And we studied People in teams around the world And we came away Understanding That people Simply put They fall into three categories They're either quitters Campers or climbers Now Quitters we won't Talk about them tonight but campers Are a fascinating group Because Well they make up So much of the world They're those of us who start Out climbing We start out with hope and optimism and excitement And then somewhere along the way we stop Maybe We get really scared And something happens to us that scares us and we say I never want to feel that kind of terror That kind of Sense of powerlessness again Or maybe We make a mistake and it affects so many people We say I don't want to feel that again or maybe we just You know as we get older we start feeling Like a little more cynical like that cynicism pours Down around our brain like prison bars Or we wake up in the world's change and we just don't know how to attack it or You know plodding away and these barriers keep getting in our way like brick walls and they Where is down And they shove us to the sidelines And now we're in a place we didn't want to be You know we're not the Best version of ourselves And we're starting We're starting to camp And Climbers Are rare group They're they're those of us they're those people Who figure out a way To continue to grow And evolve and explore And challenge themselves every day of their lives until the day they die I think there are a lot of climbers out here So the question I think is how do we climb How do we continue to climb when it is so much easier It makes so much more sense to camp Well I personally Know what it's like to be a camper because When I was in middle school I got derailed It was about a week before my freshman high school in high school I went blind From this incredibly rare eye disease And I remember being Led into school For the first time As a newly blinded person Being led to the bathroom being led to class Being led into the cafeteria Sitting at a table By myself And looking at my life Through a rearview mirror into the past You know all the things I lost The things The people I'd never see The faces You know those beautiful Visual things that I'd never see again But more importantly than that I listened to all the food fights and all the excitement and laughter and joy around me The biggest fear wasn't going blind the biggest fear Was that I would be swept to the sidelines And I would be forgotten I'd be left in that dark place and forgotten It was terrifying a life Lived for nothing And I could still see just a little bit out of my right eye And one of the things I could still do was to watch TV But I had to get really close to the screen Press my nose right up against the TV and one night I was watching this show They were focusing On this guy His name was Terry Fox Now Terry was a Canadian And he had lost a leg to cancer And he was still in the hospital when he decided That he was gonna run across Canada Now I can tell you that is not the normal intuitive decision A person in his situation was supposed to make You know this is a marathon a day This is thousands of miles Most people you learn to curl up and and shrink and protect a little bit you have left But nobody had taught Terry that because Somehow he knew But Between the things that happened to you And the ways that you are supposed to react There's a space And in that space There's a choice It's never an easy choice but it's still a choice And he chose To attack And and And so he was in the hospital And he was watching kids die of cancer much younger than him And instead of allowing that Tragedy To crush him He gathered it up and he converted it into something else something bigger A kind of darkness Into vision And he used it as energy To propel him forward every faltering step along that road And that road by the way took a Terrible toll On his body You know the shell that we're in You know It blisters all over his stumps the look on his face An absolute contradiction full of exhaustion Yet at the same time Full of exaltation And I thought to myself There's something Inside All of us And Terry especially The only way I could describe it at the time Was a light A light that seemed to be able to feed on that frustration To to You know to use those things As fuel the greater the challenge the brighter that light kept burning And and I realized that I had been focusing On all the things I lost out there I was reeling And reacting and blaming and attacking But I needed to turn inward To that light I hoped it existed in me If I could use it To turn into that storm of life and emerge On the other side Not just unscathed not just damaged as little as possible but actually stronger And better And so It was a few months after that I got this Letter in Braille it was a group they were taking blankets rock climbing Just north of here North Conway New Hampshire And I ran my hand up the wall in my room And I thought it would be Stupid enough to take a blanket rock climbing So I signed up I was tired of building walls around myself And protecting myself I wanted to tear down those walls I wanted to sort of let that light Expose it to the world And I learned that through trial and error I could rock climb I could do a pull up up the rock face And I could scan my other hand across the face And just before I would lose strength in my forearms and fingers And I had to fall I'd find enough to dig into a little crack or a pocket to keep me stuck So I could So I could do another pull up I left a lot of blood and skin on the rock But I got to the top and it was so Exhilarating it was so It was so Vibrant It was almost painful It was like a rebirth I gotta say though As beautiful as it was as vibrant as it was it was It was also scary And there's really one thing that hasn't changed much since that very first time I went rock climbing About 30 years ago And that's the reach You know I think in a way whether you're blind or not we're all reaching right We're all reaching towards something We're all reaching Towards Amazing things amazing pursuits we're all reaching for something bigger than ourselves Some kind of purpose in our lives we're reaching for these things And I think what holds us back is the fear The fear of flopping on our face Of falling of making a mistake that affects so many people the fear that we're not as good as We wanted to be The fear that we've climbed as high as we can go there's nowhere else to go but down these fears they conspire against us and they paralyze And may we decide to stop reaching When I think there is a big difference between many people and those Who embrace that reach they understand It's it's an ongoing never ending process Reaching out into the darkness towards Immense possibilities Immense possibilities they're always Unseen Yet they are sensed While so many others allow that darkness To paralyze them I reached out that day I know you reach out every day And it Has led and will continue to lead towards great adventures This is the 3000 Foot face of El Capitan And beautiful Ice climbs around the world I will say though That there is a challenge here Because When we Think about embracing This no barriers life This kind of life That is about breaking through barriers We will We will encounter some challenges along the way and it's not like we're asking for those challenges But they'll find us You know I'll tell you if you If you want to sit on the couch and And hang out you're gonna live an easier life than Then if you're trying to climb higher and higher and trying to pursue Deep questions Out there and within you you're gonna It'll be much easier life I think there is a A connection Between the extent of our reach and the amount of adversity we accept into our lives The two go hand in hand there's just no way to separate And I think also in reverse when you look at the barriers in your life When you look at these big challenges these ceilings All around us We first you know we feel kind of helpless we feel overwhelmed But then we commit Like Terry We commit to attacking those things And it releases tremendous energy and potential within us that feeds our Ourselves I don't think it's enough to solve problems or keep up with the pace of change I think we gotta We gotta be really relentless and look at those ceilings Identify them And Turn into the storm It takes a lot of courage though to turn into the storm Not to bury our heads in the sand Towards these Towards these challenges that are either in front of us they're big and small sometimes they're on the horizon ready to bear down on us The best example I've ever seen of a person able to do this Is a friend of mine His name is Mark Wellman When Mark Was In his 20s He was a brilliant climber He was headed towards great things And then he fell He fell He fell about 150 feet he broke his back game over But he decided That he was gonna learn to climb again And he went out And he developed this System this technology nobody had ever seen anything like it His partner anchors the rope and then Mark has this pull up bar and it Locks on to the rope he pulls himself up He slides up the rope He pushes the bar up he pulls himself up he slides up the rope He only gets about 6 inches up with each pull up He climbed El Capitan 3000 feet of overhanging granite they estimated he did Over 7000 pull ups In 8 days I call people like Mark Alchemist Alchemist they can take The lead That life piles on top of them and they will figure out a way To transform it into gold And they don't just do the things that you hear so much about they don't like Avoid adversity or challenge they don't They don't just deal with it what they figured out I think is pretty different They figured out how to Seize hold of that storm Of challenge that swirls around us to harness its energy And use that energy to propel themselves forward To places That they may not have gone to in any other way With an alchemist you know you can throw them in this fierce uncertain Environment Strip away their resources throw roadblocks in front of them and they'll still find a way to win Not despite adversity because of it I think I think if we want to win and grow And innovate and create these strong teams around us the way we Harness those challenge Those challenges may be our greatest advantage Well Mark invited me climbing And that was a really amazing invitation I said 100% yes week He invited me to climb this big thousand foot tower Near Moab, Utah He said I have a third climber with us Who's coming out his name is Hugh Herr And Hugh has an amazing story of his own He's not out there is he No Yeah Um When Hugh Was 17 he was a really amazing climber And he was climbing Mount Washington in the winter he got lost And his legs froze They had to be amputated When Hugh woke up in the hospital He said to me that he looked down And where his legs used to be where they were supposed to be where the sheets just dropped off into space And he wailed He screwed up his life Screwed up the life of people around him But he told me the greatest breakthrough of his life One of the greatest breakthroughs Was when he looked down at where his legs were supposed to be And instead of seeing loss What he saw was a blank canvas A blank canvas And and he was the painter He could build In that space whatever his mind Could conceive And he Wanted to climb So he built these legs They look pretty wild their little legs with tiny little feet that he could use to wedge Into cracks No human foot could even stand up in those little seams and he Became a way better climber as an amputee In certain ways than he was when he had legs In fact he was ranked in the top 10 climbers in the country They called him the first 6 million dollar man There is a climb near where I live in Colorado nobody could get to the top of this thing And Hugh flashed it He climbed it and somebody said Hugh tell us your secret he said well It wasn't that big a deal I just you know there's a hole out of people's reach so I just made my legs a foot longer That's what an alchemist does And he went back to school After that he said his life He couldn't waste his life it was really important That he do something with his life he went back to school and he got a PhD And bioengineering and now he runs the biomechatronics laboratory At MIT fusing human Beings with machines Building the most sophisticated prosthetic legs in the world But back then we were just dirt bags And we climbed this tower together we were like sort of like teenage mutant ninja turtles Check out the three of us climbing Here Ready 160 Pretty chilly up here Your hands cold A little bit they're not going numb though Feels so good to be on my wheelchair Yeah Give me a high five dude Thank you so That Experience climbing with you and mark Was for me the conception of what we call now no barriers I Listen to Hugh and mark climbing especially mark And the way he kind of pulled himself up the rope in this herky-jerky way sort of like the way Terry Fox had run I thought this Process of growth Of change of transformation Is the most important thing It is not neat and tidy It's not like in the movies Like a nice sweeping arc upward with a nice crescendo at the top Growth and change and transformation Are like a volcano Spewing lava And I wanted to understand that process I wanted to Illuminate that murky process with All its grittiness all its naked truth And the second thing I was That didn't go past me was The fact that just like I had seen that light in Terry Fox Years and years before I felt that same light and mark and hue and I wondered How you could export it how you could Help others Tap into it To grow it And nurture it And that light could easily be called The human spirit or the soul Something deep within us that we commit to growing And nurturing and using it to blaze into the world to light our way forward Towards our own purpose and our own fulfillment And since then no barriers Has grown We've grown a lot into This movement And we teamed up with you and mark to build this Organization we it's predicated on this idea That what's within us is stronger than what's in our way We bring together Amazing people Their engineers and scientists and technologists And and spiritual leaders and philosophers And artists And musicians And athletes and humanitarians All together to help people lead the way forward To teach them new ideas and new Mindset And how to tap into that light One of the people we brought in was my friend Amanda Boxtell she had been In a wheelchair For 30 years And She At our last summit she stood up on the stage Using this amazing new exoskeleton technology She walked across the stage she walked down the stairs She pointed at a group of wheelchair users in the front row And and she said get ready to walk That's no barriers I started this on the Grand Canyon I want to Resume it because In 2015 we were ready to go I had gone through This process I was ready I built this amazing team Around me I had my friend Harlan Taney He had Kayak the Grand Canyon A hundred times He was half human half dolphin Amazing kayaker Um But despite that amazing team I had around me I was still Consumed by fear You know I'd eat breakfast before a rapid And And I'd call it dry heaves and toast You know I just was consumed by it and And and sometimes when I thought about this Journey ahead all the things that I would encounter on the Grand Canyon It filled me with dread And apprehension And I wondered why I didn't sort of look at the river In a more optimistic way Uh You know and it came down I think after all the preparation It came down to faith It came down To this Decision that we make in our lives Is it a good journey Is the river leading you down towards doom and destruction and loss Or is it a good journey fundamentally is it a good journey That's leading you To somewhere Towards self-discovery And And and and so we were approaching a rapid Um called upset it's one of the biggies One of the really big ones And had a giant hole In the middle of a hole is like a washing machine and it was very much to be avoided And I remember sitting there With Harlan Scouting that Rapid And just Feeling such fear And I want to bring in my passage from my book that really talks about that experience I don't read that well So I would like to bring up Megan Megan Hopkins Who is a theology Major grad student here at BC And she's nice enough to come on up and read this passage from No Barriers Can you come up and I'll stand aside That fear and anxiety only gets in the way Harlan said Clouding your movements and reactions Then the next thing you know you're surrounded by massive chaos and it overwhelms you Instead I think of it as surrendering everything to the river And channeling your energy into perfect focus Just reacting and becoming a part of what the water is doing As I retreated to my tent I was conflicted I kept mulling over what Harlan had said And I couldn't figure out Whether the river was an ominous demon or whether it was an entity I could trust One that was inviting me forward When did you fight the river with everything you had And when could you trust it and ride the flow It seemed like a paradox When we reached upset the next day Harlan had everyone land and hop out to scout Upset was already significant But at this water level he said it got even trickier and more dangerous He pulled me aside And spoke in a clear measured voice OK It's pretty spicy But there's a perfect line to snake it cleanly Although it'll feel pretty counterintuitive The setup is everything You enter left And you keep pushing left into these lateral waves They're actually crashing off of the left cliff wall Your brain is telling you don't go over there but you have to go left That big hole Lonnie and Timmy were talking about is to your right And it is violent It's a place you don't want to be You want to hit the lateral perfectly on the left Catch the current and sneak by the big hole on your right Bam done You got this E I nodded but in reality I just kept thinking about that violent hole That had subbed Timmy and where Lonnie had swam The place where you didn't want to be We got back in our boats The safety guides paddled into position And mercifully as Harlan said check check The radios were working E don't let your mind get in the way here I heard Harlan's soothing voice Your mind can be the barrier between you and the river Between thinking it and just feeling it And being there with it If your mind gets in the way Then you're defeating the purpose of what this experience is about I let his words wash over me Nodding, slowing my breathing Pushing the fear to the outside edges of my awareness I want you to try something he went on Forget that I'm here That I'm giving you commands to follow Think of my voice as a line of communication to the water As a conduit to the river Allow yourself to feel the intricacies of the rapid Envision the tongue like a runway as we drop in Imagine the waves The canyon light glimmering off them Foam and spray igniting in flashes of color and light Feel the power of the big green beautiful waves Try to truly be here Not fighting against it Not surviving it But connected to this place I'll be right behind you to share everything that we're doing OK, I said Listening hard to the deep rumble below And trying to feel the surface of the water Through the bottom of my boat I sat up, exhaled And I tried to pull some of the river's energy into my lungs Then we were paddling toward upset Be clear, calm, in the moment, he said I focused on each paddle stroke Each riffle of the water And the space between each breath Time seemed to slow down just a bit as I dropped in Turning left and left and left Against the massive waves surging off the canyon wall And collapsing over me I busted through the cold wall of water And heard Harlan yell Hold that line I felt myself riding on a narrow seam Just between a swirling upheaval to my left Like bombs exploding on a battlefield And the bottomless hole Churning to my right Like a guttural roar coming up from the depths of the river I rode the chaos, water, spray and air All merging together And it didn't feel as threatening Because I felt like I was a part of it There was no kayaker, no boat, no paddle Just pure awareness Reacting without conscious thought Then everything grew calm around me And I knew the river had allowed me to pass through That evening at Tuckup Camp The blazing sun finally passed behind the canyon rim And the air grew soft and still I sat on the sand alone at the river's edge Reflecting on my experience It felt like six years of kayaking Culminating in one brief but perfect moment And I wanted to remember To bask in it for a little longer Harlan had said the river was too big to fight against My ongoing dreams had been of the river swallowing me Pulling me down into darkness, into nothingness Climbing mountains hadn't really prepared me either, I thought Climbing was more about bringing yourself forth Asserting your will over an extreme, inhospitable environment Yet trying to apply that learning to rivers had failed Perhaps the secrets of a river were not revealed By trying to exert the ego over it But rather by letting go And allowing the river to consume you All the way down to the core By simply giving in to the unknowable By surrendering It allowed the river to erode everything And wash away the crust Until there was nothing left but that inner light The same one I had felt many years ago within Terry Fox Unencumbered, that light was free to flow out And fuse with the landscape With the energy of the unstoppable river Maybe this was as close as we could ever get to understanding Just a brief, mortal flash of that light Connecting with something bigger Something mysterious and infinite Thank you, Meg. Thank you. So I sat on the banks Tears pouring down my face Just overwhelmed by beauty and joy and connection With my team, with this place Um, with that light And, and then a few days later Um, we came into the biggest rapid Day 18, Lava Falls Now, every time you go into one of these situations You think it's like going into chaos But there is a map, it's kind of a In kayaking, they call it the line It's, it's, and, and Lava's line Is even tougher than Upset And you start in on the right And you edge against this eddy line And then these boils hit you They're like these monster tails That want to whip you into this massive hole And you get by that, you hit the V-waves These big, giant waves that come together You hit just to the left of that You bounce out into the river, you turn right You go into the Great Kahuna waves These giant 20-foot waves that crash over you One after the next You squeak by cheese grater rock And, uh, that's self-explanatory And then, and then you ride all those boils And whirlpools out of Lava Falls Uh, this is Head and Shoulders, the biggest rapid And I got in my boat I was, I had, I had experienced the river It was now a friendly place It was now this entity I could trust Uh, and, and, and I got into my boat And, and one of those boils hit me It was bad timing, I was a little slow And I was upside down Going into Lava Falls, not part of the map I rolled up, I missed the ledge hole I hit the V-wave cockeyed And it sent me into a massive cartwheel I went through that upside down I rolled up and I was now going Into the Big Kahuna waves backwards That's not part of the map I rolled, I got knocked over I rolled up, I could barely get a breath Under all this weight Harlan, as it turns out He had braced his paddle Against one of these massive waves It bashed, it busted his carbon fiber paddle In half, smashed him in the nose He was upside down And, uh, thinking How do I roll up With two halves of my shattered paddle And, um, blood pouring out his nose Thinking how do I communicate with Eric I panicked, I pulled my skirt And I was swimming blind through Lava Falls That is not part of the map Uh, uh, you know, you have this moment Where you feel like you've discovered something And the next minute, you're crushed I sat on the side of the river Head in my hands And, uh, and then later on I'm camped just below Lava Uh, and, and, and I thought about this journey That we're on You know, and, and you, you, you wanna believe That this journey is a good one That, you know, if we accept If we kind of take on this no barriers life We build this great team around us We move forward, uh, and, and we have faith Uh, that all those barriers They fall down before us And we are, we are sort of gifted With the storybook ending And that hadn't happened I had swum through this rapid Like a drowned rat And I thought maybe it's these great forces That tell the story You know, the catastrophic event That changes the course of history Or the adversity that knocks us down Says never get up again Or maybe, um, that diagnosis That we never asked for Maybe these are the things that tell the story Maybe humans are just sort of canyon walls Being eroded by time and circumstances And then I thought about These decisions that we make You know, we make them all the time They either propel us forward along that map Or they stop us in our tracks And then I thought about those people Who I had met along the way Like Hugh and Mark and Amanda These people who had illuminated parts of the map That I wanted to navigate And then I thought about Terry Fox again And I thought about those moments Those moments where you want to flee Where you want to shrink and protect yourself You have to do something counterintuitive You have to tap into something deeper To open your heart And allow that light to shine And I thought I... I had a sleepless night And I woke up and I said Harland, I don't think I'm done Let's try lava again So we hiked back up And this is my second run through lava Check this All right, take a nice deep breath, buddy Let's just be here in the moment It was after that That I jumped right into a No Barriers expedition And I was leading one of our warriors groups Our veterans groups I met a guy named Paul, Paul Smith Paul Smith had lived a pretty tough life Because when he was a kid His mom was killed And that overwhelmed the family And they sent him off to school To military school He graduated And then he was always consumed By feelings of helplessness Because of that trauma He joined the military He wanted to be part of something Bigger than himself And he was proud to serve And then an IED exploded In his armored vehicle And it burned him over 50% of his body Pits and scars all over his body And that wasn't the problem He told me that pain He could live with that The burns and the scars The real problem The real barrier was the shame And all those feelings of shame Started flooding back into his life His life spiraled downward He got into drugs and alcohol Car accidents Suicide attempt And he had what they call their alive day The anniversary of their injury Well, one of those alive days Paul spent in jail But a few years ago He spent it with us His alive day with us At No Barriers High up in the Rocky Mountains And we sat together on this trail On this trailhead Ready to head to the summit And Paul turned to me And he said, Eric, I feel like I have squandered A lot of time He said, but recently I feel like I've awakened from a dream And I know now I need a life with purpose We headed up to the summit Along the way, the soldiers passed A crevasse, a big giant crevasse And one of the soldiers picked up a rock And he threw it in that crevasse And he said, that rock It represents my nightmares And I'm putting them behind me And as the vets turned back around Paul said, you know, most of the time You spend looking at your feet, right? And the mountains end in life He said, but he took a moment To look out over to this Beautiful, beautiful landscape And he was so high He could see these ridges Sharp, spiny ridges Shooting out in every direction Like stars And then he was so high He could see over the Over those ridges to the foothills And all the way over the foothills To the grasslands To these beautiful prairies That rolled out all the way To the horizon As far as the eye could see And Paul was also seeing His purpose and his potential Unfolding as vast and infinite As the landscape itself And it was the first time He said, in a very long time He could see his future That's no barriers Ultimately, that is no barriers Thank you very much, everyone Thanks for celebrating Yuri