Journey ebook

Copyright by Marek Kamiński 2019Translation copyright by Michał Romanek 2019Illustrated by Mariusz StawiarskiLayout and technical editing by Paweł Wojciechowski [email protected]

ISBN 978-83-934880-0-1

If you have any remarks or simply want to contact with the autor, please send email at:[email protected] join Marek Kamiński on social media:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marek Kamiński (born March 24, 1964, in Gdańsk, Poland) is an extreme & polar explorer, philosopher, innovator and the first person to walk solo to both - the North Pole and the South Pole in one year, without outside assistance (the North Pole on May 23, 1995, and the South Pole on December 27, 1995), an achievement for which he holds a Guinness World Record. M. Kamiński has applied his experience in motivation to achieve seemingly impossible goals, as well as work-related to robots and artificial intelligence to give lectures at prestigious universities and conferences around the world.

Marek Kamiński is involved in operation and work of:

Marek Kamiński Foundation

Founded in 1996, its mission is to support people (primarily children and adolescents) in self-development and to realize the vision of better living in a sustainable world. Using the 10-step ‘Power4Change’ motivational method, the Foundation supports people who are looking to change their lives, by giving them the tools to set and achieve their goals.

Marek Kamiński Institute

The Institute’s mission is to shape global awareness of the challenges faced in the fields of artificial intelligence and sustainable development, and to promote faith in human potential.

INVENA S.A.

A commercial company founded by Kamiński, with a mission to set new trends and exceed the expectations of customers looking for home installations and systems.

Moreover, Marek Kamiński is currently involved in the Power4Change 2020 project – attempting the first-ever trip around the world with an NOA humanoid robot, aimed at educating people about their impact on the global environment. The project will also involve research and explore the practicality of NOA as a travel companion.

To find more about Marek Kamiński and his actions or simply connect online, visit: marekkaminski.com

Introduction

How can one search for their own poles in life, not be afraid to dream of them, and find a way to reach them?

I have often wondered about this question. Can lessons learned from polar expeditions help other people achieve their goals and discover their poles, and can they change someone’s life?

Sometimes I try to explain it to myself and I wonder how it was that an average boy from an average Polish family reached the edge of the world.

The attempt to answer many of these questions is my next expedition, this time not a trip to a specific point on the world map, but an expedition deep into my own experience and sharing this experience. I believe that life is not only about conquering distant poles. It is also life here and now in harmony with yourself and the world; it is being yourself and following your destiny, even if the path is difficult and it requires overcoming the limitations within yourself and those that the world imposes on you.

In my journey through life I have discovered that it is very important to reach deeper, under the surface, and to explore what is hidden behind obvious truths and patterns. It often turned out that these patterns, these schemes, are superstitions, and usually not truths that apply to me. To find the truth means you have to question these patterns, to challenge and even fight against them.

Changing your life always means taking risks and overcoming difficulties, but it seems to me that it is even more risky to not make any attempt to follow your dreams.

I invite you to travel, to discover your own poles. I hope that along the way you will find help in discovering your poles, and in reaching them.

It is never too late.

Have a good trip!

To be exemplary

No one is born to become someone else.

Do I want to be seen as a role model for those who read this book? No. I wouldn’t suggest to anyone the idea of a life based on imitating others. True, patterns can lead you somewhere, but it would make no sense to try to repeat someone’s life while living your own. I once looked at figures like Edmund Hillary and Roald Amundsen, and in them I saw unattainable patterns, someone I would like to become. Today, from a certain perspective, I do not compare myself either with the greatness of those figures, nor with their weaknesses. What they have accomplished is always just a signpost. It is worth learning about them, it is worth knowing their paths through life, but not in order to imitate them and become like them.

They are already a part of history, as both great and unknown characters, who can be equally inspiring for you. Even if you think that those people were perfect and have achieved a lot, it was all achieved by them, and not by you.

Your path is certainly different. No one is born to become someone else. The point is always to become one’s true self, and in this you can only use the experiences of others. You look at what they have achieved in order to find your own way (and not necessarily to climb mountains or, say, write books). It is enough to set new standards in your life. Once, in admiring others I was looking for perfection. Now I can also see weakness in them. For example, Marek Hłasko and Ernest Hemingway both had their drinking problems.

Maybe it is impossible to separate writing from stimulants, maybe in their lives the first resulted from the second, but it does not have to be that way. It is by no means a rule, and it should not be followed. In the biographies of great polar explorers like Amundsen, Shackleton and Scott, as well as Nansen, I can see not only their great achievements, but also their great ambitions to reach unattainable goals in the fascinating and extraordinary polar world. The pedestals stood there, podiums then still empty, ready to be ascended.

Certainly, striving to take their place on the pedestal was part of those great explorers’ lives, but it was the ambition to be the first that completely filled their lives. They simply did not have personal lives, and if they had families, their wives and children often became widows and orphans. Scott died conquering the South Pole; Ernest Shackleton perished attempting to circumnavigate Antarctica; Nansen survived his expeditions and became involved in helping people. The fate of Amundsen, who died helping his rival (his body has not been found to this day), is extraordinary. I have seen Amundsen’s house: it is wonderful, very practically furnished. It was built at the beginning of the 20th century. It was surprising, for example, that a single man would install a bidet. Amundsen was a practical man. He adopted two Inuit girls who lived with him, but after some time he had to send them back, under unjustified clouds of suspicion that he was abusing them. He lived alone, but life is a certain whole, and closeness with another person is a part of your humanity. Virtually all the great conquerors of the polar world were loners, and Amundsen was no exception. To his house in Oslo Nansen added a tower which housed his studio. There were already telephones at the time. The phone in Nansen’s tower worked only one way: Nansen could call others, but others, even the householders, could not call him. This is a telling detail. I think the price for experiencing the polar world was the lack of a personal life. However, it is far from me to judge. It is very easy to evaluate; it is harder to understand.

I once had a conversation about the book “The End Is My Beginning” by Tiziano Terzani, the Italian journalist. My friend said that after reading this book she understood how much smaller a writer Ryszard Kapuściński was, because Terzani wrote truthfully, without distorting anything. As for Kapuściński, I both like and dislike him. Some of his books impressed me when I was still a child, but since I started travelling more, everything has changed. I cannot say that I still admire his work. I remember Kapuściński claiming that when he reached the north, the air froze in his lungs. I understand hyperbole as a literary device, but nevertheless… Maybe that’s why the confusion caused by Artur Domosławski’s controversial biography of Kapuściński failed to interest me. But when my friend said this, I thought it was unfair, but too easy.

We have a book by Domosławski about Kapuściński, but no similar book about Terzani. You only know what was written by him. His books are fabulous, of course, they are great to read, but no one has followed in his footsteps, no one has met the people he describes. Maybe if a book about Terzani were written, it would reveal that he had misrepresented some facts. Evaluating people, conducting investigations is a road to nowhere. Who knows, maybe if an investigation were made into Artur Domosławski’s claims, it would turn out that he had no moral right to write a book about Kapuściński. Human life is extremely complicated and, apart from obvious crimes and transgressions, it is not easy to judge people.

Often we assess people differently as we grow older. When I was twenty years old, it seemed to me that someone who did not start a family made a sacrifice of his life: he devoted himself to expeditions, discovering the world and saving humanity. Today, I think that the lack of a family is precisely that: a lack, an incomplete life. Even climbing all the peaks in the world should have a goal, a purpose. It is also, most likely, a way of experiencing love, but it’s probably much less than when you just start a family. I must also admit that when at university it seemed to me that alcohol is something that makes you feel deeper into reality and experience it more intensely; it opens up other perspectives. Now instead I see the dangers involved with all kinds of stimulants, not only alcohol. When Terzani was in Vietnam, he smoked opium every day. He managed not to get addicted, but fell into another habit: gambling. So his life gives us food for thought as well. On the other hand, life is also about dealing with risks and overcoming them. It is hard to imagine a path on which you do not take any wrong step. Perhaps an ideal, model life simply does not exist. We cannot separate successful events from unsuccessful ones.

With what I know now and my experience, I don’t want to be exactly like the people I admired. At the beginning of the road they can be unrivalled role models, an inspiration, just as mountains on the horizon inspire you to conquer them. But when you approach them, you start to see your own peaks that you want to climb. Those mountains were to your benefit, because they encouraged you to set off on the road in the first place. However, you need to notice the other peaks as they rise before you.

If I could become anyone known in the history of the world, would I want to? I don’t think so. Even if I were the most perfect, greatest figure, what sense would it make to repeat experiences and the path of what has already been travelled, written, and lived? Knowledge is useful, but the most important part is to be done by you, yourself. At the beginning ask yourself if you would like to become any chosen figure from throughout the history of the world. If you were given the opportunity to choose between your own life, (which you do not yet know and which may not be the most spectacular), and, on the other hand, that of someone else, already lived and known (say, Alexander the Great), would you decide to make that change? It is, by the way, interesting to think what these figures would choose. Maybe they would have preferred a life different from their own?

This is a question worth asking: do I want to be myself? It means accepting the freedom that I have, but also the inconvenience that comes with it.

Nevertheless, freedom seems to be something much more precious than the most wonderful, but still not your own, life. Thanks to this freedom, you can be reborn again. It is much more fascinating than leading a life whose finale is already determined and well-known. You are not fully aware of the power of freedom that you possess, nor of its possibilities. Of course, it is not the case that all you need is to think about something, and you can have it. If you have a vision, you can start realizing it at any time. Since your limitations, while not illusory, are temporary, they can be overcome. When I think about people who were my role models in my childhood, I see their one common trait: they set new standards. They did not copy others, but, using the gift of freedom, they discovered new paths. For this reason, they could function as models to be emulated; they became mountains that rise above the horizon and can be seen from afar.

Book models

Learning how to light up a camp stove is not difficult: just read the instruction manual. Reading books can help you understand the general plan of an expedition.

The polar explorers were only a small part of the world. I learned a lot from books, too: books carefully read, that are as alive to me as my own fates and adventures. It is extremely enriching to read a hundred biographies in this way. Because you can read carelessly or carefully. If you read books carefully, in a way you live the lives of other people, and that broadens your experience and your knowledge. If you read inattentively, you might as well not read at all.

You do not gain new experience, but only check off the titles you have read.

Books made me think about the poles, about expeditions. In reading the stories I lived them for myself, but I didn’t want to repeat them. What I wanted was to experience a similar story, but my own story. The knowledge I gained made me want to discover my own poles. If I had limited myself to the pattern received in childhood, to thinking about the future, about my profession, about the hardships of life, I would not have gone anywhere. Those were (and are) important problems, but only important externally. What is more important is what you have inside. To drive a car, you need to have fuel, but where you want to go is also important: are you going to just drive in circles or set yourself a goal? If you limit your life to merely getting fuel, you will just drive from one gas station to another, and that will determine the course of your whole life.

Reading so many books in very different fields early in life, I got to know different life patterns, the mechanisms of successes and failures. At a young age, when you do not have so many burdens, absorbing a large dose of knowledge cautions you against repeating the mistakes of others. It is not practical, specific knowledge. It is a mistake if you only look for what is needed to be done at work, or only study what must be studied in order to get a good grade. In learning I always liked acquiring knowledge for its own sake. There is no unnecessary knowledge. If you can only get to know something, it is worth doing it. During my university years, my only useless subject was military studies. I attended them nonetheless, with the attitude of learning something. I started to ask questions and immediately the officer in charge of the exercises made it clear that he would find a way to teach me not to ask questions. I soon understood that I wouldn’t learn anything there… Today I would advise against reading newspapers: it’s not useful knowledge. You only need a small fraction of this information. The problem is that you never know which page this useful information is on. The same can be said about all the media bombarding you with news. The challenge is to find a way to select it so that only the necessary information catches your attention.

As I was absorbed all those books, I didn’t do it with the idea that it would be useful to me one day. I was not geared towards acquiring practical knowledge. I don’t remember most of the titles today, but my mind went through training and the knowledge remained stored in my subconscious: knowledge understood as something more than just simple skills, like how to light a camp stove or roll up a tent. The books taught me how to behave in situations where it seems that nothing more can be done, seemingly hopeless situations. You have to look for a way out, you have to discover a solution, you have to have hope. This pattern was repeated in almost every biography: I’m trapped in a hopeless situation, and yet I fight, I try to find solutions, then a miracle happens and I am saved. I remembered this pattern, as such situations and reactions, repeated many times, can settle in your subconscious. Learning how to light up a camp stove is not difficult: just read the instruction manual.

Reading books can help you understand the general plan of an expedition, and learn that you have to be well-prepared for any adverse situation, that it is necessary to study all the instructions for lighting the camp stove and rolling up the tent.

Reading made it easier to absorb all the instructions and apply them. When you face a new problem, you try to solve it by drawing analogies with what you already know. An analogy can be suggested by a book about medicine just as well it can by a biography of an explorer. During an expedition your psyche is much more important than physical fitness or even practical skills. Physical fitness can be trained; it is something constant, because when you acquire it, your body’s performance does not decrease so easily. However, mental capacity can change at any time and can even break down. Even single words remembered from readings, words to lead you can be a help. For me, Nansen’s fram, meaning “forward”, has become such a word.

When your mental structure is not left to chance, when it has its foundation, when you have something to grasp in yourself, then what actually leads you to the goal is your internal structure, and your physical condition only carries it.

Your internal construction is, one could say, non-directional, unrelated to polar expeditions, business or any other professional specialization. It is a general predisposition. But it is also the deciding factor that allows you to reach your goal.

In order to have a sound sense of business, you first need to gain, and I am convinced of this, solid general knowledge of the world. Not only about the economy, but also about man, about the nooks and crannies of the human soul.

It might seem that this has little to do with business. In order to discover a niche in the market, a new idea, you also need broad general knowledge, a kind of wide internal scanner. You have to scan the current situation here and now, to look at what is happening in the business world, to compare it with your general knowledge, to try to find new solutions, to discover new ideas. Thanks to this, successes in business are often achieved by people who are not economists by education, nor have they studied finance at all, but have general knowledge about humans and the world in various fields. General knowledge is seemingly suspended in a vacuum; it seems to have nothing to do with your life here and now, but sooner or later it will be applied.

Bridges before the expedition

The crucial thing is your ability to build scenarios.

When I was a child, I built bridges in my mind, bridges of the imagination, spanning the gap between what was known and unknown, between the possible and the impossible. I remember being sent to walk a few kilometers with a can to get milk for the canteen for lunch: on my way there I imagined that one day or another I would set off on a solo voyage around the world like Leonid Teliga. It was an exercise of the imagination, and it gave me a lot: I am here and now, I am thirteen years old, I know that I will not sail around the world tomorrow. I searched my imagination for the shortest possible way to embarking on this voyage. It was not an idle dream, but hard mental work. I decided that in a week’s time I would start sailing on Drawsko Lake, then I would find a club and get my helmsman’s license, and only after I was fifteen years old would I go on a longer voyage. Finally I would go to the yacht club captain and tell him that I wanted to become the youngest person ever to sail around the world. The captain wouldn’t agree, but I would convince him with the argument that this would make Poland famous. We will start training, we will also find a yacht. When I was sixteen years old, I would go on a voyage.

My walks along the streets of Połczyn Zdrój to get milk were, for me, a journey around the world. I was living in two separate spheres. On the one hand was what I was doing in the here and now: going to school, walking the dog, studying, cleaning up, and so on. On the other hand, really wanting something means that you can exercise the imagination to connect you with your distant goal: it’s a bridge, a link leading to your dreams.

Because your goal is far away, not only is your imagination very important, but the people you meet along the way as well. These people are already a tangible example that such things are possible. You can learn the most from people, and it’s the fastest way, but never forget that other people can also have a negative impact on your life. You have so many different possibilities, and often in listening to others and not yourself, you do not take advantage of those opportunities. When you were a child or a teenager, you often came across adults who, dissatisfied with their own lives, limited your potential based on their own myopia, their own bleak scenarios. There is no point in looking to them to help develop your abilities and encourage you to follow your discoveries, your opportunities, to give you the courage to assume that anything is possible.

In order not to succumb to such influences, I had to close myself in my inner world, to confine myself to it. I rarely found people who said yes, it is possible for you to sail around the world, it’s great that you’re thinking about it, plan on it. The reaction was usually completely different: don’t think about such rubbish, you’re wasting your time, it’s better to do your homework so that you get good grades on your report card and get into a school that will give you a decent profession. At some point I stopped talking about my dreams, both to my peers and adults. I lived in my inner world. Sometimes, however, I met people who encouraged me to follow my dreams.

I learned not only to dream, but also to do something that would really bring me closer to those dreams. My inner strength was not based only on dreams, not only on independent thinking, but on the ability to build scenarios.

Dreaming of something, I immediately wondered how to achieve it step by step. And then I did it.

For example, I saw letters from children from other countries in some magazines. Most of these were letters from the Soviet Union. Ordinary children’s letters: I’m from this city, I collect stamps and read books and would like to make friends with someone. If a child in the USSR could write a letter like that, so could I. Usually those who dared to do so received dozens of letters from other children from Poland, and they answered only some of them. I asked myself why I shouldn’t send a letter to a newspaper saying that I want to correspond. Well, I’ll write a letter like that to the editorial office of a Polish magazine, it’s easy. But I would like to correspond with children from other countries. How to do that? I would have to send a letter to a foreign magazine similar to those that were published in Poland. But I don’t know the titles of foreign magazines. At that time, there was no internet, no Google… I could call an embassy, for example Colombian, and ask about magazine titles, and in which city they’re published, and can they give me the address right away? In order to raise money for phone calls, I first collected waste paper, then I went to the post office, locked myself in the inter-city telephone booth and called the Colombian Embassy. “Good morning, my name is Marek Kamiński, and I have a question: what’s the most popular magazine in Colombia?”. I was perhaps eleven years old at the time. And the people at the embassy told me the title. I remember that the officials spoke broken Polish or there was an interpreter.

And that’s how I built my action plans, my scenarios.

The plan is the basis. First there is the vision, the idea that I would like to exchange letters with people from other countries. If I really want it, if I have a strong conviction, if I believe in my vision, then I can do it, I can find my way. If this route is divided into stages, step by step, it turns out it can be travelled, even by a little boy in the little town of Połczyn Zdrój. It turned out that also in Połczyn Zdrój, if you really wanted to, you could find a foreign language teacher who would help you translate your letter. I was lucky that I met the right person then, because I might have met someone who would have said no one will publish a letter like that, no one will answer, give it a rest, boy. It is important that from time to time I met people who encouraged me to do something unconventional and outside the box, to follow my dreams. In this way I was able to deal with English and Italian, but to write letters to kids from Latin America it was necessary to have Spanish. There were no Spanish teachers in Połczyn. It turned out, however, that there was someone who had distant relatives in Spain. This person sent my letter asking for translation into Spanish and after a long time the letter came translated. I also managed to get to a French teacher from a local high school. I went to him, I remember that he lived in a block of flats, and asked for help. He was glad to do it.

People often stay in the shallow end of the pool, imagining or dreaming about going deeper. The crucial thing is your ability to build scenarios and the belief that the impossible can be possible, that you can make dreams come true. If you can think about something, you can make it happen. What you need to do this, is determination. If I decided now that I want to fly to the moon in the future, it could be possible, but the thing is I don’t see any sense in trying to get started: it’s such a huge and serious undertaking that I would have to devote to it perhaps as much as the next twenty years of my life. I can read about how it is there, reaching for the memoirs of those who landed on the moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. That’s why I prefer to look for new challenges. If, at the age of forty-seven (my age now), I decided to fly to the moon or descend in a bathyscaphe to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, I believe that I could achieve this. (By the way, fewer people have been to the bottom of the Mariana Trench than on the Moon: only two people have been there, Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh, and there have been about a dozen astronauts on the Moon.) I know that this kind of goal is achievable for me, but I also know that I don’t want to repeat other people’s experiences. Perhaps today it’s a better use of my time to be with my children than to descend to the bottom of the Mariana Trench or fly to the Moon.

It might sound as if doing something that nobody has done before is for me a value in itself. That is not the case. I don’t think it would be good for anyone to be guided by this kind of assumption. But, again, repeating someone else’s achievements is not of much value. It is, however, better to repeat good patterns than to do something bad in your own way… Being the first is something secondary, which is not always, nor under all conditions, of value.

Being the first in a situation where you achieve this by harming other people, harming your family, is an obvious evil. The boundary conditions of similar achievements are different.

To discover your North

If negative experiences do not stop you, but lead you further, you finally come across your North.

You have a whole range of possibilities, you meet different patterns that lead you in different directions. How do you find the right direction, find your North, discover it like I did? I think that when you come across your search and find the true direction, your own cardinal direction, it will give you a sense of harmony, something that you usually look for in life subconsciously without realizing it. You can give different names to it: a sense of fulfillment, of harmony, of happiness. In life you experience happiness only at certain moments. When you manage to achieve something, avoid something bad, or you encounter something exceptionally good—in such moments you are happy.

You see them when you are attentive and listen to yourself. That is why it is important not only to observe the outside world, but also to understand that you are part of this world and to know yourself in order to be happy.

It is worth getting to know yourself, also because the world is constantly trying to catch you on a hook and take away your freedom. Life constantly sets traps for you, puts negative experiences in your way. These are not bad in themselves, because they teach you to discover your own capabilities, which are best learned not in comfortable situations, but under oppression and in overcoming difficulties. It is important not to get caught.

In my life I have been to hundreds of hotels all over the world. There are some where as soon as you enter the lobby, there’s the entrance to a casino. In these places there is no day or night: the rooms are shut off from the daylight and there is a special lock. It’s very easy to head inside and forget about the world outside. It’s easy to get caught in a trap. I was once invited by a hotel manager to enter a place like that. It has taught me a lot.

If negative experiences do not stop you, but lead you further, you finally come across your North. It usually doesn’t happen right away. In my travels I discovered the world in small steps. At first there was Morocco, where there were traces of the Spanish past, which to me made it seem similar to some of the Western Europe countries I had already known. The cultural leap was a relatively small one to take. In turn, Mexico was a completely different world, the different culture that I had been craving. It passed beyond the horizon of what I had known so far. And then my North became a complement to and crossing of many borders at the same time. There were no people, no products of civilization, and yet space and nature had a very strong influence on my psyche. Intuition told me that this was something most fully mine.

Intuition is your inner voice, which you cannot always trust. I, too, did not have any rational reasons to say this space is mine. Spitsbergen was my first contact with the North, but I hadn’t done anything there yet; I didn’t have any big plans or polar preparations, anything that would encourage me to look for something in this space. And yet I felt that this is something mine, something close to me. I trusted my inner voice, although I think that if it wasn’t for the fact that I wrote memoirs then, I would probably have forgotten about this experience. I spent some time on Spitsbergen, and it was fascinating, but without my writing, I probably would have moved on and there would have been no theme of the North in my life.

A diary is a material trace of your attention, of listening to yourself, and it allows you to discover what is really yours. While writing I was discovering my inner voice. In general, people do not trust their inner voice. They have more confidence in what others, teachers, say. Perhaps some will say that their internal voice has sometimes warned them. You do not attach much importance to this on a daily basis. Had it not been for various events in my life, similar to my contact with my North, I would have done so too.

I discovered my North because I listened to my inner voice. It was that which that told me on Spitsbergen when I first came to the Arctic Circle, that this is not just another experience, it is not another Mexico. It’s a space in which I want to go deeper, go further. That’s exactly how it was: I discovered space for myself. I even lost interest in traveling. I had the opportunity to go to Mexico again, but I gave up. If I hadn’t trusted my inner intuition and forgot that I had discovered a direction that was important to me, sooner or later I would probably have become a tourist travelling from country to country, and not who I am: an explorer, a pole conqueror.

By then I had already set up my own company, which had not yet given me the financial opportunities to travel wherever I would have liked, but I could, for example, choose to sail across the Atlantic. In Germany, where I still lived at the time, there is a well-developed system of co-travelling. Once you’re hired as a crew member, you can sail wherever you want to go. I could have even gone to Australia, and yet I returned to the North. It is important that you do not miss these kinds of moments in your life: when you discover something of your own, your own direction.

The example of Nansen certainly helped me in my decision. I also studied the biography of Wittgenstein, the outstanding philosopher, who at one point in his life abandoned everything and left for Norway, and there he built a cottage where he lived alone. It seemed to me as inspiring as his philosophical books, I mean the very decision to suddenly abandon everything that he had been living for. I associated Norway with the North, Norway as a road to the North.

It was probably connected with other childhood patterns, with the books I read at that time becoming deeply embedded in my subconscious. Anyway, I turned to the North, and Spitsbergen became my pivot point. It was there that I met people who led me further, especially Wojtek Moskal, and together we became the first Polish conquerors of the North Pole.

In tandem

The best way to transfer knowledge is by being together and acting together.

I think that when I went to Spitsbergen, the pole was in me as an idea. In 1988 I was already thinking about a voyage to the pole on a yacht. These ideas lurked like water under the lid of a kettle, ready to boil. I believe that every one of us has an important goal hidden within ourselves, an important goal, awaiting to appear on the surface of our consciousness. Meeting Wojtek Moskal on Spitsbergen was a catalyst for me, one which triggered a reaction: discovering my own life goal.

I have rarely met people who, in reaction to my declaration that I wanted to do something, answered: great, do it; or even: I will help you, we can do it together. I was very lucky to have come across Wojtek. I heard about him back in Poland: that he was the most experienced polar explorer, a legend, almost like Jerzy Kukuczka, but from the polar world, not that of the mountaineer.

Wojtek has been consistently following his path for years, gaining experience.

When we met on Spitsbergen, I knew who Wojtek was, but he knew absolutely nothing about me. He simply saw a student from Gdańsk. On the one hand there was the famous Wojtek Moskal, and on the other hand I, who was searching, trying; it was the only possible way to discover my true goal. I had blended into the world of the North, had discovered that it was my world, and then an encounter with Wojtek took place: we started talking about ourselves and it quickly turned out that I wanted to get to the pole and that Wojtek also wanted to get to the pole… Right away, we started making these amazing plans.

Wojtek immediately struck me as a well-organized man. Everything he said and did was well thought out and functioned as a rational and proven system.

And all I had was a borrowed pair of skis. I was a common conscript, and Wojtek was a polar soldier, maybe even a polar general. A boot and an instructor. What a pair.

Later something that could be called a transfer of knowledge happened between Wojtek and me. Acquiring knowledge in a new field is not easy at all. It is one thing to read a book, and quite another to gain practical skills. It took Wojtek at least fifteen years to put his knowledge and skills in order, from zero to a certain maximum. These are dozens of details that you need to assess and choose the best solution. You might see many different tents on a shelf in a store, but to choose the best one amongst them takes many years of practice.

In every tent, in every camp stove, in every piece of equipment, there are dozens of details that you have to inspect for yourself. In fact, fifteen years is not such a long time to acquire this kind of knowledge.

I met Wojtek in 1990 and we went across Greenland together in 1993. We were preparing for this expedition for two years. Thanks to the preparations and the expedition itself, a transfer of knowledge took place between us. It was like we were connected by a tube. The knowledge that he had accumulated over fifteen years, I implemented in thirty days. Surely not all of it, as I missed a lot, but I gained 80 percent of this knowledge in action, in our joint expedition.

During the later expedition to the North Pole we were almost partners. Wojtek still had more experience, but the difference wasn’t so great anymore, and by the time we reached the pole we were practically on an equal level. We complemented each other: Wojtek with his experience, and me with my faith and determination. It made us a team able to conquer the North Pole. With the experience gained in Greenland, I would certainly not have reached the North Pole alone, just as I would not have done it had I gone with anyone other than Wojtek. I think it also works the other way around, although it may not be fully symmetrical. I do not rule out that Wojtek could have made it to the pole alone, but it would certainly have been very difficult.

At the North Pole I became a polar soldier, one who could go alone to the South Pole. Without the North Pole, without a common road with Wojtek through Greenland and to the Pole, without the transfer of knowledge it would not have been possible for me. The best way to transfer knowledge is by being together and acting together. If I wanted to get to know mathematics, the best method would be a joint seminar. If the aim is to get to know the rules of running a company, it is best to work with someone seasoned and accomplished in their field. If I had the opportunity to meet for three months with a great manager, to function as his or her assistant, the experience would be invaluable. People are often terrified that they’re inadequate, inferior. They shy away from confrontations which might turn out unpleasant, or that would render them a nobody. The expedition with Wojtek, I can assure you, was not all about mere pleasures. There were hard times. The important thing is not to let those times discourage you. If you do something wrong, it is not the end of the world.

People often collapse when they hear they have done something wrong, thinking, this person is now my enemy, I will not turn to them anymore. Such situations require mutual openness.

I was in my twenties when I discovered my North, the direction in which I moved for most of my subsequent life. At this age, it is easier to follow your inner voice, but I believe that it is possible at any moment of life, always. I was lucky enough to hit on it so quickly. But early or late doesn’t matter that much.

What is crucial is your openness, your willingness to change, your faith in the world and in yourself, in its and your own capabilities. Whether you are twenty-five or sixty-five, it is never too late. And never too early, as the example of the Australian sixteen-year-old who decided to sail around the world alone, shows. It seems that the older you are, the harder it is to make such decisions, but that is mere pretense. Surrounded by objects and situations, it seems difficult to break away from them. But it’s always possible.

When your situation in life makes you feel bad, you feel that this is not your space, but you can always think about different scenarios and look for other places. Often you don’t know where you would feel better: you only know that here, where you are now, you feel bad. You do not know where your North is.

First of all, you need new experiences, to touch upon other spaces, different occupations, new activities. And then build a roadmap. It is possible, I am absolutely sure of it. There are many examples of those who have successfully changed their lives at an advanced age.

Initial difficulties

Food for the expedition may serve the purpose, but if you turn back, it becomes something commonplace, something you can get at any corner shop.

As a child, I thought that the expedition was about achieving a goal. The most important thing is the experience: reaching the summit or sailing around the world. The goal is something crucial to the expedition, and the road is something you have to go through. Along the way, of course, there are different things happening, you experience something, but it is only a kind of added value. The most important thing remains overcoming difficulties and to achieving the goal. An expedition which doesn’t result in sailing around the world would be incomplete. It would not be a proper expedition, but only a trial.

When I started to travel, I saw all of it indifferent way. My first expeditions did not have any specific purpose. As a teenage boy I took a boat ride to Morocco.

The cruise was to reach Africa and return to the country. You could say that the most important thing was to reach African land. Yes, that was important, it was the first time I found myself on another continent, but many interesting things happened along the way and this naturally became the content of the expedition. Then came two trips to Mexico in which it would also be difficult to indicate any destination. Yes, by talking about them and at the same time ordering in my head the impressions connected with them, I tried to exchange specific points on the map. I could say that I’d been to Yaxchilan or Bonampak, but there were so many times along the way that it was difficult for me to identify the most important point that could be the destination of my expedition. For me, travelling has become a way of experiencing the world, not just a way of achieving my goals.

When the time came for the polar expeditions, certainly at the beginning, on Spitsbergen or crossing Greenland, the goals that I set myself were important.

I remember that I even rebelled against it. When walking with Wojtek through Greenland, we followed the strict discipline of the route: everything was subordinated to crossing the space, reaching the destination. I compared it with Mexico, but it was more interesting there, because you could enjoy exploring the unknown world, and here everything is done as ordered.