Patrick H

There are experiences in almost all our lives that form the lens through which we engage the future. For me, it was joining the Marine Corps. I went to a preppy, all-boys Jesuit Catholic high school in San Jose, California. Bellarmine College Prep was one of the most prestigious schools in the city—not to sound arrogant, it just was. Everybody was expected to go to college, get a 9-to-5 job, and have 2.5 kids. I was suffocated by the catatonia of this soulless, predictable life, drawn out like a line of powder to be snorted without a second thought. The words "safe" and "stable" were like needles stabbing into my sides, drawing blood in the form of wasted time, far from the intoxication of danger and the comfort of a warm bed or an air-conditioned office cubicle. It wasn’t for me. Still isn’t.

I shipped off to boot camp at 18 years old, just 3.5 months after graduating high school. I looked strange bald. That was it. Strange. I had become a stranger looking back at my own reflection. That was exactly what I wanted. I did mixed martial arts as a kid for the same reason. Danger tastes sweetest. The highest euphorias dance alongside the greatest pains. In five years, I went to six different countries, got married, broke my neck in a car accident, discovered my niche in life, and knew at the end of it who and what I was—and who and what I was yet to become. I wouldn’t have done it any differently. I hope this is just the beginning, though. Formative experiences are part of our origins, not our ends.