Radical Vulnerability Can You Find it Within Your Own Story
[Applause]
six days before my 11th birthday
on the other side of the world my father
alex lo made the last split-second
decisions of his life
on the flanks of an immense snowy peak
in the tibetan himalaya
a massive avalanche of ice and snow
roared down towards him
and his best friend and climbing partner
conrad anchor
alex ran one direction and conrad the
other
in their attempt to escape
conrad survived and alex did not
my father was one of the most renowned
mountaineers of his day
known even beyond the borders of the
climbing world
but to me he was my role model
my protector my best friend and my hero
as i walked to school that morning news
of his death reached the outside world
with tearful eyes my mom pulled me from
class
and as we walked to the car i knew
something had changed
she told me my hero wouldn’t be coming
home this time
the dad was gone and my world closed in
around me
it is this singular event that has
impacted my life
more than any other and looking back
on my story now having examined it in
ways i never thought to
before i’ve come to understand
how and to what degree
conflict and resolution is at the heart
of almost
every story throughout the history of
storytelling
most involve a protagonist going up
against an undefined darkness
insurmountable odds or a journey beyond
reckoning
this at its core is the most human ideal
to identify and overcome great adversity
and then arrive at a place of
enlightenment and happiness
but what if we miss a central character
in ourselves in the narrative of our own
life
what if the journey carries on the
monster remains unslain
and the plotline continues waiting for a
realization
and perspective
conrad returned from tibet and through a
shared grief became closer to our family
eventually he would go on to marry my
mother jennifer
and adopt me and my two younger brothers
sam and isaac
and together we would rebuild from what
had passed
to many outside speculators this was the
end of our story
a tragedy but one with a happy
conclusion
alex’s story became something of lore in
the community of people who knew him
and thus so did the story of our family
it felt like it wasn’t something that
belonged to me though
and more something that was just
happening around me
the story of my life up into that point
wasn’t my story and so it was hard for
me to see a place
for myself as a central and acting
character in it going forward
as a documentary filmmaker i’ve come to
understand
that empathy and vulnerability are at
the core of human narrative
when i bring my lens to bear on someone
asking them to share their deepest self
with me
to discuss past trauma or insecurities
shameful wrongdoings or painful
realities
i have to be in that with them i have to
give myself to that relationship
and shared objective so that they might
feel trust enough to let go of things
that would otherwise feel
impossible to
it’s also through my experience as a
storyteller
that i’ve come to understand that many
of our own qualms
and conflicts come down to a balance
between ego and empathy
our ego or sense of self can allow us to
do incredible things
by letting us believe that we’re capable
of the impossible
in the same breath though it can also
trap us within
obscuring our ability to see our own
weaknesses and faults
or confront inner turmoil
in contrast a deep embrace of empathy
and vulnerability
can allow us to see our direct
impression on the world around us
and thus a more real and true sense of
who we are by how we fit within
in the spring of 2016 my life again
changed in an irreversible way
when my mother called me early one
morning
in a muffled voice she told me the
climbers had discovered two
bodies melted from the glacier at the
base of shishapangma
the mountain where alex had disappeared
all those years ago
never to be seen again or so i had
thought
she told me it was very likely that one
of those bodies was that of my dad
and the other his friend and partner
dave who had been killed with him
that fateful day 17 years prior
my mind raced as i tried to grapple with
what this meant
emotions that had sat dormant in me
since i was just a boy
and a story that i had sealed off and
left behind in a former self
came rushing back to the forefront of my
reality
how would i grapple with these two
clashing ideas of myself going forward
as a family we decided to travel to
tibet
to collect alex’s remains and put him to
rest
together
it’s hard for me to remember most of
that journey to be honest
my mind grappling with the strange
normalcy of our first full family trip
abroad in some years
while at the same time following in the
exact footsteps that alex conrad and
their expedition team had taken in the
early fall of 1999
i reveled in awe at the life that alex
had led
that now brought us under these strange
and dark
circumstances
to this beautiful and wild place
while at the same time i grappled with
the stress
pain and trauma i saw re-emerging in
each of my family members in different
ways
and in myself
i imagined seeing alex again
my long-lost hero once again
face to face
before we embarked on this journey a
friend and mentor reached out with a
grain of advice
he suggested that perhaps i process this
experience to come
using the tools i knew and owned as a
storyteller
and document our journey
heeding this would lead me to my first
step
towards reclaiming my place in a story i
had seen
as not mine
and with the permission of my family
i committed to filming our trip to tibet
alongside my younger brother
sam
as we approached shishapangma this
mountain i had seen
in my dreams as a boy as a veiled
monster that had taken my life
from me and thrown me down a path
unplanned
we documented our story as it unfolded
before us
on that day as the sun rose and
illuminated the mass expanse of the
himalaya before us
my stepdad conrad went ahead with the
rest of our recovery team
i remained behind unable to go
any further towards alex’s last resting
place
i sat at the base of the ice fall
looking up at this beautiful
pristine snowy peak
imagining alex’s last moments of life
in that moment i turned my camera on
myself
and in that i gave myself the chance to
speak
my feelings my fear and my pain
what followed was without a doubt one of
the hardest 24 hours i will ever live
carrying alex from that mountain and
placing him on a pyre that sent him
skyward
and back into the peaks that brought him
so much joy and life
and played the last stage to his and his
story
ushered mine into motion
i processed this experience as i only
knew how
by living it in all its visceral
intensity and pain
and then trying to move on
trying to be strong for my family and
for myself
as we’re told to do in the face of such
things
looking back on the moment i’d lost my
dad as a ten-year-old boy
this is how i reacted then as well
it’s a knee-jerk reaction i think to
close ourselves off
and steal ourselves to pain fear and
unknowing
so that we can go back to living
even though i knew the power and potency
and vulnerability i’d found as a
storyteller
my ego-driven sense of self-preservation
made it almost impossible
to explore those dark corners i had
glimpsed within myself
in tibet
it wasn’t until the following september
when a friend and facilitator of a
summit here in big sky
called hatch reached out and asked if i
would be
willing to share about my experience in
tibet
did i even really begin to think about
the broader implications they’re in
it was in fact not until i stepped up
onto that stage
in front of a crowd of more than a
hundred or so
peers friends strangers alike and began
to speak
did i truly even begin to understand the
power
and taking that vulnerability i knew to
be so potent
in storytelling and turning it inward on
myself
with microphone in hand i told my story
unleashed my trauma my fear
my pain and broke into tears
unable to grapple with what i’d stumbled
into
walking off that stage i knew something
was different
the only way i can really explain it was
a sense
of enlightenment this feeling of
weightlessness from something i’d held
on my chest since i was just
a boy
in that break in radical vulnerability
i found the commitment to try and
continue to explore those dark corners
i had glimpsed in tibet and then
rediscovered on that stage
and make a film from what we’d begun
documenting
in tibet
it’s now been more than four years and i
stand here before you tonight with a
completed opus
to that break in radical vulnerability
in the form
of a feature doc about our lives
our story slated to release later this
year
i had conversations i may never have had
uncovered memories that may have
remained
like that hidden
and experienced emotional relief i
possibly never
would have attained under other
circumstances by the journey
it was of course a difficult path and
one with many points of darkness and
self-doubt
i often found myself sitting wondering
why
i was dragging this darkness back out
into light
why i was reopening these wounds long
scarred over not only for myself
but for my family and those i love most
and it all kept coming back to this idea
that
if we cannot analyze treat
and clean our own wounds
then how can we ever begin to truly heal
for me weaving a story from the quiet
pain i had held within all those years
was the path i knew to reach that end
now i don’t think you need to go and
make a feature documentary film about
your most painful
life experiences to find the same
perspective that i did
anyone can analyze their own life
using the idea of your story and place
in it
it’s when you look at your own life as a
story that you almost give yourself a
window to look down on yourself as a
character in your own narrative
and by it see more clearly your own
faults misgivings
fears and give yourself the chance
the space and the stage to speak your
truth
it was when i placed myself as a
protagonist within my own story
that i was able to put more validity and
weight on my own actions
thoughts and feelings
in our modern understanding of
storytelling we see it as a means of
entertainment and escape
we can see ourselves and the characters
and the narratives we observe
and movies tv shows and books
being stronger braver more vulnerable
and stepping up to do the things we
always wish we had the power to do
but what if instead of imagining
ourselves in those characters
and projecting the traits we idolize in
them
the truths we couldn’t speak the actions
we couldn’t take until it was too late
because our ego held us back
we’ve reimagined our own stories place
ourselves as the protagonist that steps
up
onto that stage faces their darkness
and draws it into light
and in that break and radical
vulnerability
and shift in perspective finds that
we’re capable of being the hero of our
own stories
all along thank you so much
[Applause]
you