Bear Grylls Quote

It was a feeling that I could be a little different from everyone else of my age, and that, if pushed, I could battle against the forces of nature and prevail. Adventure felt the most natural thing in the world, and it was where I came alive. It is what made me feel, for the first time, really myself.As I got older and the rest of my world got more complicated and unnatural, I sought more and more the identity and wholeness that adventure gave me.In short, when I was wet, muddy, and cold, I felt like a million dollars, and when I was with the lads, with everyone desperately trying to be cool, I felt more awkward and unsure of myself. I could do mud, but trying to be cool was never a success.So I learned to love the former and shy away from the latter.(Although I gave cool a brief, good go as a young teenager, buying winklepicker boots and listening to heavy metal records all through one long winter, both of which were wholly unsatisfying, and subsequently dropped as boring.)Instead, I would often dress up in my worst (aka my best) and dirtiest clothes, stand under the hosepipe in the garden, get soaking wet--in December--and then go off for a run on my own in the hills.The locals thought me a bit bonkers, but my dog loved it, and I loved it. It felt wild, and it was a feeling that captured me more and more.Once, I returned from one such run caked in mud and ran past a girl I quite fancied. I wondered if she might like the muddy look. It was at least original, I thought. Instead, she crossed the road very quickly, looking at me as if I were just weird.It took me a while to begin to learn that girls don’t always like people who are totally scruffy and covered in mud. And what I considered natural, raw, and wild didn’t necessarily equal sexy.Lesson still in progress.