Drugs, seems like a cool idea isn’t it. No matter how much we are all warned against even trying them, it has got ambassadors of its own. Steve Jobs famously asked students at Harvard if they smoked pot as if it was nothing unusual and completely ordinary. Founders of google looked for their CEO at the Burning Man Festival, Edger Allen Poe is said to be high as a kite while writing his magnum opus, Obama has admitted to smoking pot and even the medical marijuana gig has got a sizeable number of backers now. While it should be none of my concern, it absolutely sickens me to see these many people supporting a lost cause. Drugs are not a dip, they are a dead end” as Seth Godin famously said, nothing good comes out of them, ever.
So who should you look up to instead? Some ascetic, hell no! How about a Former drug addict, who climbed out of the pit. Why the hell? Because former drug addicts in the true sense of the word are rare, most of them relapse causing withdrawal of societies’ trust that certainly lasts longer than what is caused by their drugs’.
And not just any Former drug addict, this person proved to be an exemplary human being with rock solid principles and grit. This guy had enough determination to become a navy seal, a heart large enough to touch more lives than the bullets he fired. And a soul purer than baptizing water.
Fearless is a biography of Adam Brown, a navy seal operative who sacrificed his life in a counter terrorist operation in riddling tunnel complexes teeming with Taliban in Afghanistan.
Unlike other navy seal biographies, it doesn’t start off with BUD/S and how the subject endured hell week.
It begins right from when he was a child, gradually works up from there detailing quirks of his indomitable spirit and heartwarming gestures of kindness and at times reckless tomfoolery with abundant stories narrated by his friends, family and even teachers. Providing numerous pointers on how a person should be like.
Then the phase of his Drug Addiction commences. And at this point you have an image of young Adam who can do no wrong, The events of this phase of his highly eventful life is mortifying, to say the least. By the end of this part of the book, you know fully well how enticing drugs are and what harm they can inflict. A good reinforcement of “NEVER TOUCH DRUGS, EVER” persists in mind.
Then the redemption phase, he gets his life together, tries to build up the trust he lost among his family, joins navy, all because of a supportive girlfriend, who seemed to be a Godsend at this stage of his life.
The rest of the book gives a detailed account of his exploits in the SEALS and how his kind and caring nature stood out among his battle hardened peers. Seems like a happy ending is approaching, well it isn’t. Adam loses an eye in a freak accident. While most people would lose all hope and despair , now that their military career is done for and crib about how unfair life is, Adam trained to shoot with left hand, graduated from sniper school and continued taking life in his stride. Then his fingers got almost severed when the Humvee he was in did a barrel roll following a nasty collision, No fucks given, without paying the slightest attention to his pain, he immediately started evacuating his team mates.
Eventually his epic life comes to an end during an impossibly dangerous mission that his seal team is assigned. He had the option of leaving navy with benefits. He wanted to earn his MBA from Harvard. One more tenure, he said to his wife (His then godsend girlfriend) and then its over. Sadly, it was this deployment that claimed his heroic life as he was shot multiple times, the Medic at the base said he couldn’t have saved him even if he appeared immediately in front of him after he was shot.
Events of his funeral procession are testament to how many lives this one man had touched while he was alive.
While most people are suckers for motivation, Adam Brown was a source. The strength of his character and his can-do attitude is an inspiration for anybody who comes across the story of his life.
Drug addict or not, this is a book everyone must read. It leaves the reader a better human being, and I can’t say that for many books.