Think you can’t change your life by doing one exercise? Try this one: write your obituary based on the life you’re leading -- now write an obituary based on the life you dream of. In 2002 Roz Savage did just that -- reality versus her dream, laid out before her in black and white. She had the choice to accept the path she was on or go for the life she wanted to experience. Roz chose the dream, taking one of the largest Pleaps (pink leaps of faith) I’ve ever seen.

An Awakening

A big part of her new path was a passion that developed after a sudden environmental awakening. “I was horrified that I had previously been so oblivious to what we are doing to our planet. And I thought – if I’ve been oblivious, maybe lots of other people are too.” But how could she bring about global consciousness from an office desk in London? Roz put the question out to the Universe and it responded: ROW THE OCEANS!  She’d done some competitive rowing in college but she’d never been passionate about the sport. This was akin to the Universe telling you to run across every continent after you’d completed a marathon…back in 1995.  “It wasn’t quite the answer I’d expected but as the days went by I realized it was in fact the perfect platform – environmentally low-impact, unusual enough to get attention, and an ideal subject for blogging, books, and presentations.” 

And I thought environmental activism was avoiding plastic bottles, recycling cans and composting banana peels.   

To carry out her new calling, she’d have to abandon her old trappings. She gave up her power suit, her material goods, and left a happy marriage with nothing more than a suitcase and her sleek boat. “Some people might think that I’ve sacrificed a lot – a well-paid job, home, marriage, possessions, and most of the things that people associate with a sense of security. But it hasn’t felt like a sacrifice at all. It has felt like liberation. Janis Joplin sang that ‘freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose’, and I would agree with that in a really good way.

I’m in Australia at the moment, getting ready for my bid to row solo across the Indian Ocean, and a load of people here have lost their homes to floods. All the things that we associate with security can be lost in an instant. When your security and your happiness come not from what you own, but who you are and the knowledge that you can handle most things that life can throw at you, that’s enormously empowering.”

Is this why so many of us are afraid to trust in the Universe? Hand your life over and the next thing you know you're rowing across the Atlantic? Can you imagine where the Universe would like to take you? Are you afraid to find out? Afraid you might end up loving it?

Surviving the Oceanscape

We land lovers stand at the shore with our romantic notions of the ocean and its spirit, but Roz has a more realistic view, “I am completely unsentimental about the ocean. When I’m out there in the middle, I am mostly aware that the ocean is not a natural place for human beings to be. We are extremely vulnerable once we are out of sight of land, and the ocean is my adversary as often as it is my friend. But sometimes it does seem like a gentler place. A visit from an animal is always special. Turtles are my favorites, although I don’t see them very often. Once a baby whale shark spent about 20 minutes doing laps of my boat. It was only about 8 feet long, and they can grow to over 30, and I think it was just curious and wanted to check me out.”

The great irony is while Roz is dedicating herself to bring awareness to the oceans, she could lose her life on the very next swell. “When I was rowing my first ocean, the Atlantic, I kept wondering why it was being so mean to me. I was (I thought) a good person doing the right thing for the right reasons. So why was it making my life so difficult? That year, 2005, was officially the worst year ever for weather in the Atlantic, including Hurricane Katrina. In the rough conditions, all four of my oars broke, I got tendinitis in my shoulders, and the 103 days of the crossing were mostly uncomfortable, and sometimes downright dangerous.”

When was the last time you dedicated more than an hour or two to a landscape: the forest, the wetlands, a desert? Without technology and material distractions your world would quickly whittle down to the wilderness and your internal terrain. How long could you be on that level with Mother Nature before becoming seriously uncomfortable?    

“Ultimately I learned not to take it personally. Nature does not make moral judgments – on me individually or on all of us collectively. Our continued existence as a species does not depend on whether we ‘deserve’ to survive in a moral sense, but rather a practical, scientific sense. Given what we have done to our only planet, is human life sustainable in the long term? Time will tell, but big brains and opposing thumbs won’t help us much if we have poisoned our ecosphere beyond what our bodies can adapt to.”

A Row through the Belly of the Beast 

Roz has seen the pollution beast first hand. “I rowed around the outskirts of the North Pacific Garbage Patch, between San Francisco and Hawaii. It’s not exactly an island. If it was, we’d be seeing photos of it all over the press, and it would be a relatively easy thing to clean up. Unfortunately, it’s a huge accumulation of plastic that is not biodegrading, but it is breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces. Those small pieces don’t go away. Instead, they are able to get into the food chain lower and lower down, and accumulate to higher levels at the top of the food chain. Chances are that when we eat seafood, we are also eating some of the nasty chemicals that leach out from plastic into the tissues of the creatures that eat it.

There is talk about cleaning it up, but the challenge will be to pull out all those tiny pieces of plastic without pulling out all the good stuff too, like the plankton that forms the basis of the ocean food chain. The best thing we can do in the short term is to avoid making the problem worse. If we all avoided plastic bags, plastic water bottles, and plastic coffee cup lids, most of which have a useful life of only about 20 minutes before they are thrown away, that would make a huge difference for the better.”

So maybe environmental activism IS about avoiding plastic bottles, recycling cans and composting banana peels.  You don’t have to cross an ocean to have an impact on it, just be mindful of your own trash (ELIMINATE plastic bags and water bottles) unless you like the idea of ingesting plastic with your grilled tuna in 2015.    

Now that’s An Obituary! 

Nine years later and you have to wonder if Roz’s life has already topped her fantasy obituary. She successfully rowed the Atlantic in 2005, became the first woman to row solo across the Pacific Ocean, was named Climate Hero by the United Nations Environmental Program and was chosen last year as National Geographic’s Adventurer of the Year. She's published the book Rowing the Atlantic: Lessons Learned in the Open Atlantic, and was the subject of the documentary Rowing The Atlantic. This month she’s launching Eat, Pray, Row-the Indian Ocean and after that little jaunt she’s going to row back across the Atlantic. I’m beginning to wonder if there’s enough saltwater on this planet to match Roz’s passion. 

“I used to suffer from low self-esteem in my old job as a management consultant, because I didn’t feel I was contributing anything worthwhile. Now I have a purpose and a passion that have me jumping out of bed in the mornings, eager to see what the day might bring. I’ve found a happiness that doesn’t depend on that very ephemeral happiness I used to get from buying new things. That happiness only lasted until I saw someone else who had something better. The happiness I have now comes from being comfortable in my own skin, and feeling that I am hopefully leaving the world a slightly better place than I found it. I can ask for nothing more.”

How is your obituary going to read? If the Universe told you to “Stop Drifting; Start Rowing!” would you do it? Are you oblivious to the impact you’re having on our planet or are you doing something about it? What would you give up to live your passion? Does the idea of living with only “me, myself and I” terrify you? 

Author’s note: Roz Savage intends to launch her bid on the Indian Ocean on March 30, 2011. In order to make this happen she needs your help.  Her remaining goal is $30,000 and you can sponsor a mile for $10. On the day that she rows "your" mile(s) you will get a special thank you on her blog. For more details, and to follow her adventure, check out her website at www.rozsavage.com.