A moving story to keep going
Good morning. Happy Friday to you all. Today, just wanna this this this clip from Richard Hammond online talking about he doesn't really talk about what happened to him, so we don't know. He had a major car accident and he went into a coma. And this video of him explaining that, oh my god, touched touched me.
Speaker 1:I felt emotional, so I'm gonna play it now. Hopefully, you enjoy. It's not that long.
Speaker 2:Long time ago, I was in a coma with a brain injury as a result of a particularly flamboyant crash involving a certain jet powered dragster. In hospital intensive care, things apparently not looking very good, but I didn't know. There was a lot of morphine flowing around my system. I finally woke, and I shared with my wife, Mindy, a dream I've been having, a really, really, really vivid one, probably partly on the cat of the morphine. And in my mind, I've been walking these hills here in the later streets overlooking Batavia.
Speaker 2:I was having a lovely time strolling along, and gradually, I got a growing sense of, you know, when you know you're in trouble, when you're a teenager staying out just that bit too late. You're not definitely in massive trouble yet, but you're in a bit of trouble. And that feeling grew and grew, and I walked up this slope where I am now towards this tree, this exact tree. And as I got closer and closer to the tree, that sense of, oh, I really am in trouble. I'm gonna be shouted.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna be in a lot of trouble. Grew and grew until eventually my dream, I turned back. I didn't walk around this tree and carry on and I woke. And that's the dream I told Mindy about. Mindy told me her side of the story because at the same time I was having that dream.
Speaker 2:She'd been called into intensive care and told missus Hammond, I'm really sorry. Things aren't looking good. All is vitals. They were monitoring everything. Was on full life support and breathing apparatus and the law.
Speaker 2:And she was told, it's not looking good. We think we're gonna lose him. And she said, is there anything I can do? And they said, well, no. Not really.
Speaker 2:And she said, can I shout at him? And they said, yeah. Whatever. And she asked, no. I mean, really, really shouted at him.
Speaker 2:And she did. And, apparently, she roared and screamed and swore at me. Don't you dare die. And that's when I turned back from this know that very well having damaged it with a frontal lobe brain injury and spent a long time recovering. And I've taken huge solace from that ever since because that was my last thought, certainly at the time.
Speaker 2:And my last thoughts took me somewhere I love and somewhere I'm happy. And that last thought, if I had shut down and stopped, would have echoed as far as I was concerned for all of eternity, and I found immense comfort from it ever since. So I'm not scared of this old tree. I pass it regularly when most months at some point, I'll come up here and walk. And every time I pass it, I do feel comforted.
Speaker 2:I know it's where I'll go, and it's still here, and I'm still here. But it does it does speak of the importance of place and the joy being connected with the place. And I know this is very, very genuinely where I am, and where one day I will be. And one day I will walk around this tree, nice to know where it is.
Speaker 1:Powerful, isn't it? Kinda like it's amazing. And this I love the part about, like, you know, he's got that place where he walks. He's got that place and he feels at home. We've all got that place, we go for a walk and we should never take those places for granted.
Speaker 1:Those are the important moments. There's not the the fancy cars and the, you know, spending a lot of money and stuff like that. There's little walks in nature and he's connect to Thania and just his wife shouting at him. He's like, you know, in my head, it's vividly. She's screaming at me, you know, don't you dare leave me.
Speaker 1:Come back here. And, like, that story, you know, why would he lie about it? To start with, shouted him, you know, know, reminds me of Dylan Thomas's poem, Rage Against the Dying of the Light, like, know, raging against what was gonna happen and it it pulled him back basically. But and I I don't know really what lesson I took from that moment, but it's kind of like some people just need someone to tell them to come back or to go and do it, keep going. And it can and that can somehow work.
Speaker 1:Like, sheher shouting him to come back. He's come back. Having our support system isn't is is essential, I think. Like, in those moments, those are the people that are gonna be there for you. Right?
Speaker 1:Your family, your friends that you hold dear. You know, we can make loads of new superficial friends if we want and all our stuff, but, you know, it's Thor's people that matter. And that story is it's just it's quite comforting to know as well. I mean, a lot of there's a lot of anecdotes about people in the near near death experiences talking about going to some really nice place. And I suppose if that's how death is, then fine.
Speaker 1:No problem. But he wasn't his time to go, and that's down a lot of us probably down to his partner shouting, saying it's not his time. And he decided can't believe I'm connected to Harry Potter, but, when Harry gets hit by Voldemort in the forest and goes to that white King's Cross, and, he's like, where do I go? And, you know, looks like King Cross. He's like, hey, come here.
Speaker 1:It's up to you. It's your choice. You can go back. You can go back. Just hop on the train.
Speaker 1:Your decision. It's up to you. I'm not saying that's gonna be for everyone, but really, what is it? We we have a choice in in those moments, like, I don't know if I feel like we have a choice. We we can keep going.
Speaker 1:We can give up. We've always got a choice. Those are those are always two options, just give up and keep going. And I've had to remind myself of that lately, but a lot of stuff as well, like, work hard or something, you keep going at it, and it's just so much grafts, like you're pushing this massive boulder up a hill and the boulder gets bigger, there's more boulders coming down, it's raining and you've gained minuscule, you've gained like a meter, you know, but you gotta keep going. What are the choices there?
Speaker 1:You keep going or the boulder crushes you, you know? It's gotta keep going. And I hope that story is quite like, I don't think it's a sad story, think it's a very uplifting story though. He doesn't really talk much about that experience he had but hopefully we have got the support in his life that do shout to you to keep going or shout to you to come back. And maybe you can use this podcast as me shouting you to keep going because sometimes we just need that, it's for you to keep going.
Speaker 1:One more day, keep going today. Don't let the stress of life come all over you and That's only weird. Don't let the stress of life take you down. Don't let it, you know, you can make it a lot worse for yourself. Alright?
Speaker 1:Things can get overwhelming, but there's only one thing we can do at a time. We break it down and we keep going. The overwhelm mainly comes from our brain thinking has to solve everything at once, it doesn't, it never works that way. If you're overwhelmed by energy bills going up, how are you going to find money, you go save money, your health and fitness, social life, work, you break it all down. What can I actually do today?
Speaker 1:You know? And they break it into a task and you do that. It's not gonna fix the thing straight away, it's not gonna do anything straight away but it moves you in the right direction, that's all we can do. So nobody sitting there letting it overwhelm us. Like another Highbroad reference, like you know in Highbroad one when all the envelopes coming into the door.
Speaker 1:Just like what you catch, overwhelmed, can't do anything, don't do it. So yeah, don't overwhelm yourself. This is your voice to keep going. You deserve to do this for your own health mindset for your family and friends. You want to be the strongest version of yourself and it does take like the book really discipline.
Speaker 1:It takes discipline to keep going when you don't want to go. And that's the difference between people. If you can keep going when you really don't want go, you're ahead of most people because most people will give up and they will fall into these easy pleasures and then they will never get to where they wanna go. But us, we're different. We keep going and this is your message, me shouting to you to keep going.
