When we arrived on the island, I was determined to do a little fishing. The only boat available was a ten-foot aluminum rowboat. I took it anyway because I wanted to get out beyond that reef line for some peace of mind and communion with my Creator. Although I was used to cabin cruisers, with live-bait tanks and flying bridges, my little rowboat and drop line would have to do today. The swells and surf were rougher than I had anticipated, but having been born and raised in La Jolla, I was unconcerned. I rowed out farther than I should have and soon I was out of sight of the rocky cove where Susan was sunbathing. I put a piece of squid on my hook and lowered my line about thirty feet to the bottom, having not the slightest notion what was down there.

To this day, I still don’t know the exact sequence of events during that next sixty seconds. The fish must have weighed at least twenty pounds by the force of the tug on my drop line. It was pulling my arms out over the stern of the boat, and I must have tried to stand up to gain some leverage. The boat capsized. In the next instant I was in the water, with the anchor line wrapped around my leg, and sinking with the aluminum boat. The adrenaline began to flow and my heart rate soared as instant reality hit me. This was not a seminar or one of my simulation drills. This was not a Peter Benchley fiction adventure, with a Denis Waitley look-alike. I was in immediate danger of losing more than the fish and the boat.

Having been a carrier-based attack pilot trained in survival, and a strong swimmer, I did not panic. I was the coolest, middle-aged, completely out-of-shape ex-pilot in the ocean. It took me well over a minute to untangle myself from the anchor line and struggle to the surface. Gasping for breath, it took only another minute to survey the situation. I was eight thousand miles from my home, off the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. There were no other boats, and I was more than a mile offshore. No one could hear me or see me and I already was winded from being underwater so long.

I had told my wife I would be back by 2 p.m., which gave me another three hours in which to drown comfortably before she would begin to become concerned. I was fairly certain that I could not swim the distance to shore without being pulled by the strong current into the huge breakers that were crashing into the reef at the mouth of the cove. My only hope for survival was to salvage the boat. I still had the anchor chain in my hand and, operating on the principle that objects weigh less underwater than out of it, I started slowly pulling my ten-foot “last hope” toward the surface.

It took at least another hour to inch the boat up close to the surface by pulling on the anchor line. By that time the current had swept me dangerously close to the first group of coral formations approaching the reef. I decided to let the breakers carry me onto the coral so that I could try to land upright on top of one of the rocks, and simultaneously right the small aluminum boat. Looking back at the odds, it was the most ridiculous gamble I could have considered. I must admit, however, I was putting a lot of faith in the Lord to slow down the interval of the waves and help me stand up the first time through.

The first big wave threw me over the rocks into the swirling eddy currents. The boat was dented but still intact. I let the rip current pull me away from the rocks and positioned myself, with the submerged boat, for the next set. somehow the next wave knocked me on and off the rocks and flipped the rowboat upside down emptying the water that had kept it submerged. I managed to right the boat, and paddled it, half full of seawater, away from the rocks and toward the cove a mile away.

Although I was numb and exhausted, I was elated with the prospect that God had seen fit to let me live one more day. When I looked down at my legs, I wasn’t so sure. My legs had been gashed on the coral and I was trailing blood behind the boat. My heart jumped up in my throat as I thought of “Quint” chumming for the great white shark in the movie JAWS. Have you ever seen a dented, ten-foot rowboat, with no oars, travel a mile in under half an hour?

Sitting by the cove with bandaged shins the following day, it was appropriate that I had selected The Star Thrower, by the late Loren Eiseley, to read and recuperate with. I hadn’t told my wife how close she had come to being “insurance rich.” I didn’t want to concern her and, besides, why should I share my own stupidity with someone who still believed I was brilliant? I thumbed through the book until I found the title selection in Eiseley’s banquet of essays. After I finished reading the fourteen-page essay, I closed the book and laid it down on the blanket. I took Susan by the hand and we went for a walk by the tidal pools, stepping very slowly and carefully among the rocks due to the stiffness in my legs. I had discovered, by serendipity, the tenth best-kept secret of total success.

Celebrating Instead of Collecting

When Eiseley wrote The Star Thrower he must have had someone like me in mind. It was the story of a man, my age, who goes to the seashore to try to gain true perspective on the meaning of life.

The Star Thrower tells of a man, in his prime, who observed the shell collectors at the beach in the height of tourist season, particularly after a storm, engaged in a kind of greedy madness to out-collect their less aggressive neighbors.

I have met many people with the collectors’ morality. they are not unique to the seashore. They are in every country, every city, and every home. They are the people who are trying to collect life and own happiness. They are the consumers. The Star Thrower was a wise man who saved the lives of starfish that had been washed ashore by sailing them gently, like Frisbees, from a rocky point back out to the safety of deepwater. He was building anew life rather than trying to collect its substance.

The Star Thrower’s secret is for all of us to know – and live by. Life cannot be collected. Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn, or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude. The gift of life is not a treasure hunt. You cannot look for success. The treasure is within you. It only needs to be uncovered and discovered. The secret is to turn a life of collection into a life of celebration.

All the best-kept secrets of success involve your perspective – how you see life from within. The Seeds of Greatness are the responses or attitudes you develop as a result of “seeing” the world more clearly. When you see more clearly, you see yourself as valuable and your self-esteem grows strong. Seeing clearly enables your imagination to create and soar. Seeing more clearly gives you the understanding that you are responsible for learning as much and contributing as much as you can to life.

When you see life from within, you see wisdom, purpose, and faith as cornerstones of your family’s foundation. You see through the eyes of love and reach out and touch all those with whom you come in contact. Seeing from within is having the courage to adapt to change and to persevere when the odds seem overwhelming. Seeing from within is believing that beauty and goodness are worth planting every day.

In this chapter I have not called attention to the best-kept secret in the way I have all the others. That is because perspective – seeing life from within – is not only the tenth and final secret; it is the very essence of all that I have written in this book. How we see life makes all the difference.