What do you take away from 500 miles in a wheelchair? A hundred and forty parishes, three hundred places, thousands of conversations, and one question that stopped me years ago.
What do you take away from 500 miles in a wheelchair? A hundred and forty parishes, three hundred places, thousands of conversations, and one question that stopped me years ago.
Four or five hours a day on the road at a snail's pace, and it never once rained where I was. The brain stores the day at the front and moves it to the back overnight, filing emotions with emotions, and it cannot tell whether it was a film or your life. This one also goes back to the day I left home heading for a river, and the question that arrived before I got there.
One thing to try: Find one thing in this moment that gives you a genuine thank you. Only one.
In this episode
(0:00) Five hundred miles round Cornwall, done
(1:51) A hundred and forty parishes and over three hundred places
(3:39) It never once rained where I was
(5:25) How the brain stores the day, then moves it overnight
(6:59) Filing emotions with emotions, film or real life
(8:44) Heading for the river, and the question that arrived first
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Thank you for listening.
Steven
The story behind this one
I have just finished five hundred miles round Cornwall in my electric wheelchair, on the road rather than the coast path, raising money for the air ambulance that saved my life thirty three years ago.
A hundred and forty parishes. Over three hundred places. Four or five hours a day at seven or eight miles an hour, and that was on a good downhill. Nearly twelve thousand pounds with gift aid. The first person to do it.
I have the dash cam footage and I could probably name every hill and most of the bumps. But what I actually kept is the moments. The boy who came running down the road with a pound for the pot. The woman in her nineties who came out to tell me how the air ambulance saved her partner two years before. The afternoon the sky opened and I was drenched.
And one particular stretch where I was looking at a wall of black cloud ahead with the rain visibly coming down, sat in bright sunshine. I could dread the clouds or enjoy the sun. I sat in the sun. It never did rain where I was that day.
What it taught me
Your life is not a line. It is moments, and the mind stores them by how much they made you feel rather than by how important they were.
I heard a programme with Stephen Fry where sleep researchers kept picking up a whooshing sound and assumed the equipment was broken. It was not. Everybody's brain does it. The front of the brain holds the day, and overnight it moves it all to the back and files it. The people it happened to more were sharper the following morning.
And it files emotions with emotions. It cannot always tell whether something was a film, your life, or a story a friend told you. Which is why two people can both remember being the child in the same anecdote.
This one also goes back to the day I left home heading for a river. I had written the letter. I said the pain was mine and nobody was to blame and that everybody should find a way to love each other. And before I got there, a question arrived. What would you miss?
I thought about my daughter, who was fourteen. Whether she would have children. What would happen at school, to my nieces, to my dog. And I decided to give it a few more days.
Later, in the hospital bed, the advice I would actually have needed was another question. You are paralysed. What are you going to do with it? At eighteen I would have wanted to punch whoever said it.
There is a third question, and it is Tony Robbins asking a widow where the gift was in her husband's death, and refusing to stop asking. Dig deeper. She got to, well, I had somebody to love.
Questions people ask
Is this a sad episode?
No. It has a rough couple of minutes in it and it is mostly about how full a life gets when you start noticing what you are storing.
Why do the intense moments stick, good or bad?
Because the brain files by intensity, so it knows what to move towards and what to avoid. Despair and joy both qualify. Ordinary Tuesdays do not.
What do I do with a moment I hate?
Ask what is in it, honestly, and be willing for the answer to be small. Not the gift you wanted is still a gift, and sometimes it takes years to see it.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
personal-story · update · gratitude
Read the transcript
Hello and welcome to Stillness in the storms.
I've just done 500 miles around Cornwall.
I was out on the road most days between four and 5 hours, travelling
at a Snell's pace, about seven, 8 miles an hour, if the going
was good and downhill.
If I look at the dashcam footage from my chair, I can remember
every hill, nearly every bump, I can remember all those things.
But it really is just the moments, the moments of the little
boy that come running down the road to put the pound in the pot.
The lady that come and met me in her nineties to tell me the way
the air amulet saved her partner's life two years previous.
And the moment that the storms opened and I absolutely got drenched
and all those little things, that's what we remember and that's
what I want to talk about on today's podcast.
And I apologize because I cannot remember what number of podcasts
I'm on.
100.
And something.
One thing I'm sure about is I'm on a podcast, and stillness in
the storm is all about helping you have a little wisdom when things
are not going the way you would like them to go, which life
very rarely does anyway.
So it's a good podcast.
If your life doesn't go your way, you're on the right podcast.
And I haven't been here for a while.
I haven't done a podcast for about six or seven weeks because
those of you who don't know, I'm paralyzed just below my neck.
And I embarked on 500 miles around Cornwall, around the coast
of Cornwall, not on the coastal path, I couldn't do that,
but on the road, doing the Cornwall 500, the first ever person
to do it and to raise money for the air ambulance that was instrumental
in saving my life 33 years ago.
During that time, I visited.
Well, I went through 140 parishes, visited over 300 places,
coves, beaches and towns, villages.
And I must have spoke to thousands of people and heard countless
stories about how important the air ambulance is to them and
to their community.
So, yes, it feels like I've been off on a bit of a jolly, and
it was through all winds and weathers, but I've raised nearly
12,000 pounds, including gift aid, which pays for saving lives.
And it's the most biggest privilege I've had.
It's been the roughest weather, and we haven't had snow,
we had everything else.
But I just want to talk to you about what became really important
during the days when I was just sitting there, quite numb, when
the mind just eventually shuts down and says, do you know what?
I got nothing to think about.
Let's just be here.
And then all you're doing is looking at the two hedges either
side of you.
However beautiful a cornish hedge is, after hours and hours and
hours, it's still just a cornish hedge.
And you got the nature of the butterflies come and go, and the
birds come and go, and the weather comes and goes, the sun through
the.
I remember at one point when I was going down the road, I was looking
up ahead, and these really black, horrible clouds were ahead,
and you could see the rain coming down.
But where I was to, it was beautiful sunshine.
And I was thinking in that moment, do you know what?
I could either really enjoy the sunshine, sat here, or I could
be dreading and moaning about the clouds ahead.
There was my choice, and I just sat and enjoyed the warmth.
And incidentally, it never did rain where I was to.
It must have just avoided it all day that day.
But that's life.
And I just remember that moment, I think when we realize that
what the mind does is this amazing way of remembering things,
to preserve them in a way that serves us in the future.
And I think that's really important.
It's not remembering them, because, hey, that was really good.
I'm going to remember that.
It remembers that because of a good reason and a good emotion.
Just the same as the mind remembers the bad things or the things
that were a threat, because it serves us later in future, so it
serves us to know what to go towards, what to avoid.
And every night when you go to bed, they now know this.
There was a wonderful podcast that Stephen Fry dissecting the mind
or something like that, and he was talking to some sleep experts,
and one night, one of the people, they were analyzing their
sleep, started making these sounds, whereas to go whoosh, whoosh.
And they thought, there's something wrong with the equipment.
They go in and checked it.
No, it was fine.
They did it again.
And then when they analyzed at this frequency, everybody's mind
does it, and it does it for a few hours, sometimes a few minutes
at a time.
And what they realized was, when they'd done tests before and
after, the people that had this happening more overnight had
a clearer mind in the morning.
And when they used to scan the brain about tasks and different things
people would do and how busy their lives were at a time, they
came to the conclusion.
And the best guess at the moment is that the front of the brain
remembers things.
It stores it up all day.
And then when you go to bed at night, it moves it all to the back
of the mind and files it all away.
But in doing that, it also sorts it out.
It puts it into slots of what's important and what should
be remembered and how it should be remembered and what way
it should be remembered.
And we don't have any control over that.
We don't remember how it is in the way of, oh, I'm going to put
it there.
The brains evolved to do that by itself, and that's why it might.
It probably puts it in like deep storage, somewhere really deep,
where you cannot overly remember it until it comes out, or
someone prizes it out, or you get some kind of jogged memory of
it, because it just wasn't important, anything important.
It puts it on the surface.
So it's the same way as it sorts out the way we do our homes,
the way we do cupboards, things like that.
We will sort it out, we'll put the important stuff easily, readily
available, and everything else will just store it away and put it
in cupboards and all that.
And we very rarely find anything because it wasn't that important
until it becomes important.
And it looks like the mind does exactly the same thing, but
it also stores them with different things, like we'll put
food with food, or cold food with cold food, and keys with keys.
But the mind doesn't quite do that.
It puts emotions with emotions, good emotions with good
emotions.
And it doesn't know whether it's a film or whether it's a real
life, or whether it was a friend's experience or your experience.
Very often they know when you get to later life, someone will be
recording an experience of when they were a child.
And the other person's like, no, that was me.
That wasn't you.
Because it's hard to know when you recall it.
You recall it as a new version every single time.
I'm slightly going off topic on this podcast, but I just want
to share how much memories and moments mean to us.
And as I'm now in my early fifties, I'm starting to realize
that every part of my life is about moments.
If someone asks me something, I go to moments.
You know, I'd done a speech the other day where I spoke about
the three questions that were most important to me when I went
out to take my life.
Halfway through that, contemplating taking my life and
how, and when I was just about to do it, a question popped into
my mind is, what would I miss?
And I thought about my daughter.
She was about 14 at the time, and I had already left the suicide
letter.
I explained that I was sorry.
And I explained all these different things.
I didn't quite go down to the details why, but I said I had so
much pain.
It was nobody else's fault but mine in the way I was dealing with
it.
And no one was to blame, and everyone was to find a way to love
each other.
And that was my letter.
And I left home.
I was about to go down over the bank into a river and make sure
the chair would fall on top of me so I wouldn't be found.
But something cropped into my mind.
A question.
What would you miss?
And it was quite profound because it just made me think, well,
I wonder if Kemba will have children.
I wonder if.
What will happen at school.
Wonder what will happen to my nieces, my family members.
What would happen to me?
What if there is something about it?
What would happen to my dog?
And it was all those kind of things that just made me suddenly
go, I'll give it another few days.
And it was that moment that change something, just push my life
in a slightly different direction.
And then the moment of breaking my neck and lying in bed,
in the hospital bed.
And the best advice I could have had at that point was another
question.
Great.
You're paralyzed.
What are you going to do with it?
That would have been brilliant.
I would have wanted to punch him.
I think I was 18 years old.
Someone coming along and saying that.
I'd be like, really?
Is that your kind of advice?
I wanted a bit of empathy and sympathy, actually.
I'm paralyzed.
I'm not going to walk ever again.
I'm never going to be able to wipe my bum.
I'm never going to be able to have a shower in peace.
I'm never going to be able to be some kind of sex God in the bedroom,
what you're playing at.
And then.
But that would have been good advice.
Again, a moment.
And the moment when someone put cottage cheese in my mouth when
I was lying on bed rest and I had to spit it out.
That was awful.
Sorry to give you that image.
But that moment I remember.
I don't remember the mundane meals, the things that did not mean
anything really important to me.
And someone could remind me and I'd be like, I do remember it
now.
Yes.
So life is about how we store things and how we remember things.
I think when I really look back at the stories I tell and the
feelings I have, it was always about what made me feel most.
It wouldn't make no difference whether it was a really despair,
a real powerful desire, a wonderful, joyous feeling.
The higher the feeling or the lower the feeling, the more intense
the feeling.
That's a better word, intense.
The more I remembered it.
So if you think about your life and you look at it in some kind
of linear way, when you look back over the last 1020 years, you'll
start to realize that it's just moments.
And that's it.
It's those moments that make life magic, those moments that change
our direction, those moments that give us the opportunity for
better or worse.
And there's nothing we can do about them in that moment.
They are already here.
That was the third question on my what can we do with the present
moment?
Where's the gift in the present moment?
Because I genuinely believe there's a gift in everything.
I think I heard Tony Robbins say that once, where's the gift?
When he was looking at a lady talking about her husband had passed
away in a tractor accident.
He said, where's the gift?
And she was saying, I don't know.
How is there a gift in my husband dying in a tragic accident?
He said, where's the gift?
Dig deeper, dig deeper.
And I remember because I was thinking, you're on a high.
You're barking up the wrong tree.
How can there be a gift in someone passing away?
This may not be a gift that you wanted.
He's already passed away.
There's nothing you can do about that.
But there must be something that you can find in this moment
that gives you a feeling of thank you, gratitude.
And I think she looked up and said something similar to, well,
I had someone to love or something like that.
And he's like, there.
There's one.
Dig deeper.
Dig deeper.
And he did it for a while.
And it made me realize, but do you know what?
There's a gift in everything.
Even if it's a gift that you do not want.
Even if it's like, really?
I didn't want those socks for Christmas.
I didn't want a handkerchief with my initials on it.
You know, we all get them.
Sorry if that's the Christmas gifts you give to people every year.
In actual fact, handkerchiefs and socks are really good Christmas
present.
But, you know, when you're just turned 18, it's like, I had
loads and loads and loads of teddies.
No one knew what to buy me when I broke my neck.
So they all bought me teddies.
I do like teddies.
I've got loads of them.
But, you know, you can only have so many teddies before you go,
before you all teddied out.
So the moral of my podcast today is your life's going to be
moments anyway.
Just try to create more of them.
Just sit down and look at the butterfly.
Don't treat it in a way that oh, I've got to smell the roses,
I've got to look at nature and all that.
No, that's all wonderful and beautiful thinking, but just go what's
in this moment?
And allow your body to feel what the moment is.
No matter what the moment is.
And the more of them you have, the more of them you feel, the more
full your life will be, the more joy you'll find in these moments.
But very often we're clinging to the moment or we're trying to
push a moment away rather than just going, hey, where's the gift
in this moment?
What can I do with this moment?
Because that's all you're doing, is living from moment to moment.
That is the way we've evolved.
Like it or not, you are no different than me in many, many ways.
We might look slightly different.
We might be taller, or shorter or fatter, or might have had a different
experience, but you're still human and the brain still works in
very similar ways to our memories and moments.
So I want to say thank you for bearing with me over the last six
weeks.
It's been awesome for me.
Sorry that you haven't heard from me, but I'm going to tell you
this.
I've loved what I'd done.
I've raised 12,000 pound with gift aid, nerdy and saved lives with
the Cornwall air ambulance.
Thank you for being there, thank you for donating.
And that's what keeps this podcast hosted and free with no adverts.
It's you guys that buy me a coffee and treat me.
And to all of you, thank you, I love you and have a wonderful week.
