First day
at film festival, first bang. Kon-tiki, story of Thor Heyerdahl and his crew
passing the ocean managed to stop me on my tracks. Heyerdahl had a belief and
he set out to prove people from south america came to populate the west indies
fifteen hundred years ago. And he does that on a raft made with wood and ropes
in a journey that takes him across the Pacific from Peru to Tahiti for more
than hundred days.
There are
two parts to the story I cherished deeply. First part is the journey itself;
this sect of people like myself who cant stop their insatiable need to explore
and see and ask questions in the oddest parts of the world until there is no
mountain left to be hiked; no city to be explored; no land or geography to be
experienced; no climate to battle with. Those of us who have the desire to
persevere the why and the when and the who got to create the cultural spatial
mixes tucked between pieces of earth; a soup of archaeology, anthropology,
history, geology, immigration, genetics, earth sciences and simply the rocks or
the sand dunes. Thor the Norwegian gets on the raft and sails away to the
mountain height waves and the whales and sharks of the Pacific.
It is truly
rare any explorer would pick up a specific aim to fullfill; on the contrary,
usual lingo is ‘we go because it is there’. And this brings me to the second
part why I loved the film and the story so much. It is how you take a group of
people to a journey as the captain and you take them along because they believe
you; nothing else but pure belief. The captain who has a goal and who has
absolute belief in the journey’s outcome; and keeps making the calls sometimes
deadly sometimes so risky to bet the entire ship. And truly big outcomes will
only come the bigger bets you make. Watching the film was a microcasm of
leadership in action where you pick up most skilled yet diverse group of
individuals with different backgrounds; gathering them behind a leader who has
an ultra-aggressive but simple aim to fullfill. We create these sects of believers
throughout own journey in life. There are those followers who are convinced
your belief is the right thing; there are those who follow because they don’t
have a belief and they need one; there are those who follow because of the
journey itself, not the belief. And sometimes the result gets to be amazing.
Any of you who has been through a journey with a group of people and they
managed to fall in love with the idea and eventually with each other know what
I am talking about.
It is as
good as making it to the top of Machu Picchu; standing on the Pamir highway;
crossing from atlas mountains to the Sahara’s sand dunes; waking up in one
piece at a snowcamp for the first time; and yes—crossing the Pacific. Life’s
journeys are good when they give us the beliefs and achievements that teach us
who we are and how we lead and treat others.
In
celebration of Thor and his crew.