Choose Your Own Path

I wouldn’t expect others to open up and be vulnerable if I wasn’t willing to do the same.

Being an army brat taught me early that home isn’t a place; it’s adaptability. Every few years, new schools, new friends, new towns. What felt like instability became an asset: the ability to land anywhere and figure it out.

Life moved in phases. The analytical side of me built companies. The creative side needed something else. Theatre Arts turned out to be the best degree I could have gotten. Definitely not for the career path, but for understanding human nature, story, vulnerability.

Then came the inflection points. The ones that break you open.

I lost both my parents. Tragically. Together. And I made a mistake that took years to understand: I pushed the grief down. Buried it. Kept moving. I thought that’s what strong people did.

It wasn’t strength. It was numbness.

Rock bottom doesn’t announce itself. It creeps in - in burnout, in depression, a slow greying of everything that used to matter. I was successful by every external measure and completely hollow inside.

The crack came in an unlikely form: an ambulance. Specifically, driving one from the UK to Mongolia with a group of strangers for charity. The Adventurists called it the Mongol Rally. I called it desperation dressed up as adventure.

Somewhere in the Gobi Desert, broken down for yet another time, covered in dust, laughing at the absurdity of it all, something shifted. The grief I’d been running from caught up. And instead of destroying me, it passed through.

The friendships forged in that desert were different. When you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere with people, pretending falls away. You see each other. You help each other. You become real to each other.

Four years later, I was on a motorcycle in Siberia, heading toward the Arctic Circle. In the middle of winter. More adversity. More breakdowns. More of that strange alchemy where suffering becomes meaning.

[From future CP: eventually this led to the path I describe in Eight Years Ago]

I started noticing a pattern in my life. Phases, each with a different hunger:

First, I wanted experiences that were memorable. Stories to tell, boxes to check.

Then I craved experiences that were visceral. Feeling alive, even if it hurt.

Then I sought experiences that helped me understand myself. What could I endure? What could I survive? What was possible?

Then I needed experiences that were connected. Real relationships, not networking.

Now I seek experiences that are meaningful. Impact that outlasts me.

Why share the darkest moments? Because someone reading this might be in their own desert. Broken down. Wondering if the numbness ever lifts.

It does.

But not by pushing through. By letting it move through you.

[From future CP: I believe we often connect more deeply in the dark moments than in the bright ones, simply because everyone has their own version of dark moments. Even if they look completely different, they feel the same. I’m beginning to wonder if maybe we connect just as much in the light moments, the highs. There’s just a different kind of vulnerability there, one I’m still learning to recognize and embrace.]

The paths we choose aren’t linear. They loop back. They dead-end. They surprise us. The only real mistake is pretending you’re on someone else’s path when you know you know yours leads somewhere different.

I don’t think everyone moves through these same phases, or in this order. Your path is your own. But I do think it’s worth asking yourself: What am I craving right now? And is that craving serving who I’m becoming, or who I used to be?

Choose your own path. But choose consciously.