TED Talks – Ray Zahab: My trek to the South Pole

Speaker: Ray Zahab

Rating: ***

                Trekking through a snowy, ozone-depleted wasteland isn’t something attempted by any regular person.  To do something like this, you would have to be in peak physical condition, and have a burning passion for adventure and for bringing inspiration to those around you.  Ray Zahab had so much of these things that he and his crew completed a trek to the South Pole in record breaking time – 33-days.  And they blogged the whole way.

            Ray had been training for this for two years, and at the age of near forty had realized three years before that training and his adventure runs began that there is so much more to life than meets the eye.  While running across the Sahara desert over 131 days, him and two of his closest friends saw the real extent of the water crisis in Northern Africa, and how horribly it affected the children most of all.  So on completing this journey, he and his two friends decided their next adventure would be a sprint to the South Pole, and that they would do this to inspire the young.  They started a blog and gathered a following, then stayed connected with them throughout the whole 33-days of their adventure through the snowy wastes so as to inspire those young kids that looked up to them.  The thought of being able to bring the realization that there is more to life than one might think is what kept them going and kept them strong, and it sure seemed to work for them.

            A truly inspiring story, in the sense that someone would do this solely TO inspire.  Ray Zahab definitely succeeded in his goals with me, because when I heard about his adventure in this TED Talks video, I was shocked.  He says that, five years before his South Pole journey, he was somewhat of a deadbeat smoking a pack a day, and all it took for him to change was for him to realize he needed change.  So simple, yet amazing.  If he could accomplish such great things realizing this in his late 40s, what could I do with this realization just now at the age of 17…?  It makes me think for sure, and is just another inspiration pushing me towards finally getting up and realizing that I’m not quite a kid anymore.  It’s time to step it in to gear.

Zahab, R. Ray Zahab: My trek to the South Pole. February, 2009. TED Talks, Recovered from: http://www.ted.com/talks/ray_zahab_treks_to_the_south_pole?language=en on June 1, 2014.