Interviewing Bear Grylls

Few years ago, when my best friend and I were still in junior high, we were spending far too much time on watching survival shows. At that time our favourite one was run by the adventurer Bear Grylls. About a week ago I’ve read an interesting interview with Bear and I decided to tell you today something about him and his shows.  

His career started when he joined the SAS (Special Air Service) at the age of 20. Unfortunately, three years later he needed to quit because of an accident which had happened during parachute jumping. Bear broke his back in three different places and had to change his live plans completely. At that that point he even didn’t know if he could walk after it.  

In the interview he says that at that moment he was obsessed with a memory of one of his posters from a childhood, hanging on a wall in his room. The poster was a gift from his dad, and showed the highest mountain in the world. It gave him a power and motivation to recover. A couple of years later he became the youngest Britain who reached the summit of Everest.  

In his series, Bear shows how to survive in extreme conditions. This obligates him to eat a lot of “specialities” like insects, little reptiles or vitals of death animals. I remember that as a child I couldn’t understand how anyone can eat similar things (well, I still barely understand). 

Asked, if anything scares him, Bear answers that he had learned to manage fear. He says, that a lack of control is something you can’t afford when you trying to survive in the wild. Maybe it’s hard to believe, but he ended up in hospital only once - moreover, a situation happed not in the wild, but during sliding down from a snowed slope. A cameraman unfortunately dropped the camera, which hardly hit Bear’s leg, luckily missing the head.  

Bear is not only the adventurer, but also a husband and a father of 3 sons. He mentions, that his unresolved struggle is a fact that he has a dangerous job, and in the same time he has the gorgeous family. But he used to the situation, he even likes a special separation: after struggling with wild animals, venomous snakes in the jungle, he just come back home to the normal life.  

Asked about his childhood, Bear remembers that his dad taught him a very important thing - “what matters in live is to follow your dreams” and in life there is stuff much more important than good school reports. He encouraged him to dream, explore, they loved to climb together. Bear also has an older sister. When he was a new-born baby, she called him “bear” and it began his nickname. As a child, he hated it, but later he used to it and even officially changed his real name (Edward Michael).  

For me, Bear is better than Edward, don’t you think?