Kon-Tiki Inspiration

In short, not long ago a young man walked into the gym visiting from Norway. He’d followed our blog and social media for sometime and this was his chance for a real connection. Amidst some small talk, he indicated that he flew in from Easter Island during his third visit to DEUCE Gym across a twelve month span.

Naturally, I was curious to know more. A brief explanation didn’t do much justice and he knew it, so days later a book arrived by mail. It was called Kon-Tiki.

After reading this real life adventure story, I learned all about this gentleman’s grandfather, Thor Heyerdahl. His life’s work and research proposed that the Polynesian Islands were populated by South Americans, who reached the remote bits of land by rafts made from the only resource they had to do so; balsa wood. 

Submitting his work was an exercise in rejection management. After being adamantly denied by the leading researchers on the topic, Heyerdahl did what anyone who was committed would do. He found a way.

He and five companions, all ignorant to seafaring, built and embarked an a ninty-seven day journey at sea through uncharted waters covering 4700 miles from Peru to the Polynesian Islands. To be fully transparent, they had help. A small multi-lingual parrot joined them for most of the trip until it perished in violent seas on the voyage.

Committed to his mission. This trip, seemingly a suicide mission adrift on balsa wood logs thousands of miles from help, proved his theory possible and changed the world’s understanding of the history of the Polynesian Islands.

It’s moments like this that I look up and wonder how one could choose to live an unremarkable life. As our friends from Power Athlete HQ like to recite from Henry David Thoreau, “I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. To put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived.”

 

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach