Often when I'm out in public,
a child will stare at me,
and if the child is particularly brave,
they'll approach me and ask,
"Are you a pirate?"
(Laughter)
To which I then need to respond,
once again,
"Yes." (Laughter)
I mean, let's be honest:
I've got two hooks, prosthetic legs, and a penchant for hard liquor.
(Laughter)
All I need is an eye-patch and a parrot, and I'm basically there.
(Laughter)
But I like being a pirate.
I find many advantages to having a disability,
and I'm not just talking about the money I save on gloves
(Laughter)
or the fantastically legitimate excuse for never having to master chopsticks.
(Laughter)
I'm talking about real advantages I feel I've gained
having gone through physical adversity.
When I was 19, I contracted a disease
that resulted in the loss of both my arms at the elbows,
both my legs below the knee,
and left enough scars on my face to elicit jealousy in Freddy Krueger.
Now, I made never be able to communicate in sign language,
but my increased resilience and general ability to problem-solve
has been heightened by being forced to think laterally
to overcome problems that most people aren't faced with.
One of the first lessons that I learned
immediately followed the painful and arduous task
of learning how to walk again,
but it went on to pay dividends for the rest of my life.
It happened when I attempted to step up a curb.
Now, as rudimentary as this action sounds to most of you,
stepping up a curb is somewhat of a challenge
for those of us without ankle movement.
So I tried stepping up the curb
the way I'd always known how, front on
for days on end
with no success
until it became obvious that the time and effort
I was investing into this endeavor was clearly disproportionate
to the benefit of its outcome.
(Laughter)
So, I decided to inspect the problem from a different angle.
If I couldn't use an ankle joint
to achieve the range of motion that I required to mount the curb,
I would have to use a different joint,
like my hip.
So I turned my body perpendicular to the curb
and placed my foot up sideways,
and I was able to step up immediately.
Within five minutes,
no staircase was safe from my advances.
(Laughter)
That very day, I climbed a staircase of three flights,
which I was quite impressed with as well,
except I realized that I didn't know how to get back down again.
(Laughter)
That was a long weekend.
(Laughter)
Now, in my past life as an able-bodied person,
I'd been a guitarist.
I was alright as a player,
but I'd never really taken it further.
I'd never really sat with a band or played live all that much.
Nonetheless, music was a great passion of mine,
and when I lost my arms, the idea that it may no longer be a part of my life
critically challenged my will to keep living.
However, the thought that emerged
immediately after being discharged from hospital
was if Ray Charles can play the piano while blind as a bat,
let's get to work on a solution for this guitar problem.
So, consulting with an engineer,
I designed a slide system that would hook into my left hook
and I devised another pick-holder system that would clip into my right hook.
Now, if this worked,
I would be able to play the guitar open tune on my lap, like a slide.
So after weeks of testing and alterations,
I finally had the accessories back to play the guitar again,
and I was right back where I was before losing my hands,
being issued with noise complaints from my neighbors, obviously.
(Laughter)
But this time, I took it further.
I started a band with my friends.
We wrote songs and recorded them.
We even played gigs to real people.
Not as many as this.
(Laughter)
But even though it was a just a tiny step,
it was a giant leap from what I'd achieved when I was all in one piece.
Now, while relearning every action that one has ever cultivated
might seem like a significant undertaking --
and believe me, it very much was in the short term --
it was nonetheless having a positive effect
on the way that I approached everything else in my life.
Not only dit it transform my ability to problem-solve,
but I also felt I became more pragmatic,
less sensitive to hindrances,
in some cases more patient,
and magically transformed people's abilities to offer me
their seats on public transport.
(Laughter)
Trivial setbacks began to pale in comparison
to challenges I'd previously overcome,
and this allowed me to take a calm and measured approach to these challenges,
keeping them in perspective
and often even finding new and improved ways to overcome them.
The benefit of not dwelling on the negative
and just getting on with the task at hand
became self-evident.
It even encouraged me to pursue some more fulfilling career paths
that may otherwise have been inadvisable.
And who would have thought that an appropriate job for me
might involve the meticulous operation of electronic equipment
to curate dance music to people in inaccessible places
under the influence of alcohol.
(Laughter)
Not I.
So in a competitive industry where DJs have been relentlessly honing their craft,
desperate to attain gigs, sending demos to clubs,
my best friend and I took a different approach,
and we started our own club night
and we employed ourselves as the DJs.
(Laughter)
Suddenly we had a headline slot.
(Laughter)
Now, when we started that club night, I could not DJ.
The first time I ever got behind the decks was on our opening night
in front of hundreds of people.
I'd only just learned where the play button was.
But, being previously faced with so many ultimatums,
one's forced to be astute in adapting to new situations.
That club night went on to become
the longest-running weekly club night in Sydney,
and we as DJs went on to play Australia's biggest music festivals.
So eventually I either learned quickly,
or the standards of clubs have gone really downhill.
(Laughter)
Coming close to death can be an educational experience.
It's certainly true that one's priorities receive somewhat of a realignment
immediately afterwards,
and it's also true that some of those priorities
are met with an increased sense of urgency.
But another, more salient, realization that comes to light
is the triviality of our own self-importance and self-consciousness.
To truly understand the extent to which your self-consciousness
prohibits you from engaging in opportunities
should lead everyone to take risks they otherwise wouldn't.
We're merely a blip on the timeline of the universe, right?
Act accordingly.
Now, the ideas that I'm presenting today were imbued upon me
through some otherwise unfortunate circumstances, granted,
but they're lying dormant in the lives of anyone who's willing to exploit them.
If we all understand that we all have unique weaknesses,
and if we're honest about what they are,
we can learn how to best take advantage of them,
whether they be mounting a curb or fear of presenting sales reports
or the inability to sufficiently manage one's finances --
looking at that guy (Laughter) --
there lies the ability to learn to adapt
and even the ability to rewire one's instinctual response to challenges.
Adversity is good,
and it has the potential to make you stronger,
and, at the very least,
you can scare the hell out of kids if you look like a pirate.
(Laughter)
Thanks.
(Applause)