Modesty, Thy Name is Bear Grylls

I just finished reading a book. An autobiography of a person I admire and who has inspired me over the past few years. Bear Grylls. The man behind Man vs Wild. The man who was part of the elite SAS Corps. The man who has spawned a whole new genre of television programming. And why just television programming? The Man vs Wild series has spawned a whole new lifestyle among people all over the world. Adventure and survival has come into our living rooms and more and more people are venturing out into the wilderness with the knowledge that has been inspired by Bear Grylls.

The book makes fascinating reading. It is an extremely easy read and written from the heart. Having seen the Man vs Wild series multiple times and through that having started to understand the essence of the Bear Grylls psyche and character, I very much doubt whether the book was dictated to an editor and published under Bear’s name. No, I do not think that at all. Like Bear says in his Epilogue, the book has been written by him and much of it on flights that he takes around the world, whether filming or on the lecture circuit. It is written from the heart and the inner soul of Bear Grylls the person is exposed, naked to the world, to see him as he really is. A person like any other person we come across on the street. The only difference being his dogged determination and the acceptance of the fact that nothing comes easy. All goals worth fighting for come with inherent obstacles. The harder the task, the more glorious the goal, the more difficult the pitfalls that come on the road to achieving that purpose.

For a person to have had a near fatal accident from a skydive, to have come back and scaled Mt Everest, to doing the kind of things he does on television, is indeed something worth appreciating and getting inspired by. But more than his exploits what hit me on every page of the book was his modesty. He need not have been as modest as he has been in the book. His growing up years, his relationship with his family, the modest beginnings, his love for Shara his wife and their three sons, the way he acknowledges the help he received from friends, all come through wafting through the pages like a rose. He has not failed to recognise those who helped him get up when he believed that he could not rise again. He knows he is not the best soldier or the finest adventurer or the most knowledgeable survivor in the whole wide world. He believes that luck had a whole lot to play in his success and him becoming a household name around the world. He realises that and accepts that with all humility. Modesty and humility are something that I have taken away from this book.

Bear Grylls has grown in my esteem and I feel proud to have his name as one of my inspirations. Truly, if I can imbibe a little bit of the modesty and humility that Bear portrays and obviously lives by, I would become a better person. Success tends to result in swollen brains and an increase in height to ensure that the head is continuously above the clouds. Far from it as far as Bear is concerned. Hats off to him. And I concede, modesty, thy name is Bear Grylls.