Origin Story: The Fires That Forged Me

“I wasn’t born that way. I chose it. Again and again.” - Simon Clark

A Prelude to Becoming

Some people are born in hospitals.

Others are born in fire.

I can’t tell you the exact moment I became me —

but I can tell you where it started to hurt.

Where it started to burn.

Where the boy began to fracture, and something more crawled out of the gap.

These are not memories.

They’re furnaces.

Each one lit a part of me I didn’t know I was allowed to become.

A split skull and a blood-soaked shirt.

A ragged war manual gripped in shaking hands.

A library aisle haunted by the footsteps of men who never came home.

Most children are taught to be careful.

To colour inside the lines.

To wait their turn.

I never stood a chance.

There was something wild in me from the beginning.

Something that didn’t want to be saved — only tested.

And so the world obliged.

It gave me stone walls, snapped ropes, burning lungs and silence.

It gave me the ghosts of warriors and climbers and escape artists.

It gave me hunger — and dared me to survive it.

So I did - And I still do.

What follows are the first sparks.

Not of pain, but of purpose.

Not of wounds, but of will.

When I think back, there are the three fires that forged me.

And I offer them to you now — not to admire, but to light your own.

The Cold Edge of the Flight

I was six or seven, maybe younger.

Too young, they said, to play with the older kids. Too small. Too slow. Too soft.

So I built my own kingdom.

At the far end of our garden, past the patchy lawn that I was supposed to be content with, stood an old stone wall — two or three feet tall on our side, but a full body-drop into the field on the other. Beyond it, a barbed wire fence. Standing next to the wall in our garden was a gnarled old tree standing like something from a fable. Wild. Crooked. Beckoning.

That tree became the centre of my universe.

I tied a length of rope to one of its lower branches and looped the other end through a stick. In my mind, it wasn’t just a swing — it was a statement. Bigger. Higher. Bolder than anything the big kids had. I imagined them watching in awe as I launched from the wall, arcing through the sky like some mini Tarzan, laughing in the wind.

So I climbed.

I stood on the edge of that old stone wall, rope in hand, heart pounding like a war drum. And I leapt.

But the rope… snapped.

My head slammed into the edge of the wall with a sickening crack. Then nothing — just air and gravity and the blur of stone and sky. I fell into the narrow trench between the wall and the barbed wire fence at the field's edge. Metal tore through my shirt, my arms, my back.

Blood bloomed across my chest like a red flower.

I tried to scream, but it got caught somewhere in my ribs.

No one came. No one knew.

And so I did what I would spend the rest of my life doing — I dragged myself up, climbed back over the wall, and went to try and clean myself up.

I burst through the kitchen door, half-panicked and already rehearsing the telling-off I knew was coming — but my mum didn’t yell. She went white. Because the blood was pouring from my head in rivers, soaking through my shirt, dripping down my belly. It looked like my throat had been slit.

Next stop: hospital. My first ever stitches.

But that’s not the part that stuck with me.

What stuck was this:

While the nurse was still patching up my scalp, I was already planning the next version of the swing.

Stronger rope. Better knot.

Higher arc.

Because something in me had already decided:

Pain is temporary.

Glory is forever.

And I would never wait for permission to fly.

The Boy Who Ate Fire

By the time most boys were learning the offside rule (something I still don’t really understand), I was learning how to fall.

Not just fall — land.

Climbing up walls, vaulting sheds, testing the edges of rooftops like they were invitations instead of warnings.

I trained in martial arts, not just for the belts or the discipline, but for what it gave me — stillness in the storm. I’d practice kata alone in the garden at dusk, the light fading, the silence deepening, my breath the only sound.

But I wasn’t just a fighter.

I was a seeker.

Any film, any book that even whispered of something deeper — of adventure, risk, honour — I devoured it. Climbing documentaries, martial arts manuals, survival guides, mythologies, escape stories. I wanted to know what made legends tick.

And then one day, I saw it.

I was watching a film about the first American ascent of K2 — a mountain so dangerous it kills one climber for every four who reach the summit. In one scene, the lead characters were sitting in a tent, high above the death zone, reading a battered old book. The camera lingered on the cover — almost as if the film wanted you to see it.

The Art of War.

By Sun Tzu.

I froze. I knew that book.

It was sitting on my shelf, covered in dust. A martial strategy relic my sensei had once mentioned in passing. I’d skimmed it once, didn’t understand it, and set it aside.

But now…

Why on earth was a mountain climber reading an ancient Chinese war manual 8,000 metres above sea level?

What did that have to do with climbing?

I pulled it off the shelf that night and started again.

And this time… I didn’t just read it.

I consumed it.

Line by line. Battle by battle.

It wasn’t about war.

It was about life.

It was about power, strategy, terrain, psychology. It taught you how to win when you were outnumbered. How to stay calm in chaos. How to bend the world to your will without force.

In the 1980s and 90s, I later discovered, this book had become an underground bible in business circles. Wall Street traders, elite CEOs — they all quoted it from memory. I decided I would too.

One passage hit me so hard, I read it over and over again until it really sank in:

“If you fight with all your might, there is a chance of life; whereas death is certain if you cling to your corner.. This is the ‘dying ground’.

To be on 'dying ground' is like sitting in a leaking boat or crouching in a burning house.”

I became so obsessed with it that I wrote a variation of it on the back of my bedroom door in red ink:

"When you are on dying ground, fight."

That line became a compass.

Whenever I was scared.

Whenever I was tired.

Whenever life shoved me to the edge of the cliff and whispered jump —

that line was there, burning in my chest like kindling waiting for spark.

I wasn’t just reading anymore.

I was becoming.

From that moment on, I knew:

This wasn’t just about martial arts.

It wasn’t just about mountains.

It was about learning how to survive — how to win — how to stay alive and walk out of hell when the odds say you can’t.

That fire never left me.

I still have that same battered copy of The Art of War.

And to this day, every time I open it…

it smells like sweat, iron, and destiny.

The Ghosts at the Library Door

There was always something sacred about it.

That hush.

That weight in the air.

The way the light fell across the shelves like stained glass across an altar.

It didn’t matter whether it was a grand old library, a dusty village bookshop, or a second-hand stall at the Saturday market — if there were books, I would find them.

And when I found them, I searched.

Not for stories.

For blueprints.

Because somewhere along the way, I realised I wasn’t reading for entertainment —

I was reading for survival.

For answers.

For men who had gone beyond the edge and come back with something worth knowing.

I hunted for them like a bloodhound — the escapees, the saboteurs, the mountaineers who vanished without a trace, the jungle fighters, the Arctic explorers, the POWs who dug tunnels through clay and concrete using nothing but spoons and their bare hands. Of the samurai of ancient Japan, the warrior monks of Tibet and China

While other kids were reading Roald Dahl and Goosebumps, I was poring over tales of frostbite, escape maps, trench knives, silence, starvation, coded letters, and the unbearable weight of duty.

And every now and then, I’d find a story that made my hands go cold.

Because it felt like I knew them.

Not from school. Not from bedtime tales.

But from somewhere older.

Like a line of warriors whose blood still echoed in mine.

There was the one who cut through his own leg to survive.

The one who walked barefoot across Siberia to freedom.

The one who fell into a crevasse and wrote farewell letters on the inside of his jacket, knowing no one would find his body — only his words.

Those were my brothers.

And I swore I would honour them.

Not by copying their stories, but by living a life worthy of them.

So while the world told me to focus on grades, sports, status…

I focused on grit. On endurance. On silence. On pain.

On how to hold my breath underwater until I blacked out.

On how to climb out a second-storey window without a sound.

On how to keep going when everything said stop.

Because deep down, I believed —

one day, I too would be tested.

Thrown into some impossible situation where strength alone wouldn’t save me.

And when that moment came…

I would already be ready.

I don’t remember the names of half the people I grew up with.

But I remember every detail of those books.

The texture of the pages. The faded ink. The smell of dust and courage.

I still visit them.

Not just the libraries.

The ghosts.

Every time I stand on a summit, or crawl through rubble, or lace my boots in the dark before another impossible challenge —

I feel them.

Watching.

Smiling.

And I whisper to them,

“Thank you. I didn’t waste it.”

It’s strange, looking back.

For years I thought those stories were just scattered sparks —

random moments of rebellion, obsession, or silent awe.

But now I see them clearly for what they were:

a blueprint.

A prophecy.

A quiet agreement between who I was… and who I promised to become.

I didn’t know then that I’d be crushed in a car wreck.

That I’d wake up paralysed, mourning, broken, and told I would never walk again.

I didn’t know I’d stand at the edge of death, more than once.

That I’d have to claw my way back through hell with nothing but willpower, purpose…

and the ghosts I’d met in the library whispering,

“We trained you for this.”

But they had.

Every book.

Every fall.

Every fire.

They weren’t preparing me for an ordinary life.

They were forging a soul that wouldn’t shatter —

a spirit that would keep climbing long after the ropes were gone.

And so here I am.

Not because I was lucky.

Not because I was brave.

But because I remembered who I was —

and what I was made of.

Stone walls and stitches.

Ink and ancient wisdom.

Blood, silence, and a fire that still burns.

So if you see strength in me,

know this:

I wasn’t born that way.

I chose it.

Again and again.

And now, as I step into the chapters that follow — the battles, the breakdowns, the summits

I carry those three fires with me.

Everywhere I go.

Every time I fall.

Every time I rise.

THE FIRES THAT FORGED YOU — Reader Checklist & Reflection Ritual

A guided activity inspired by the three fires in the story.

1. Identify Your First Fire

Think of the earliest moment in your life that hurt but shaped you.
☐ What happened?
☐ What did it take from you?
☐ What did it give you?
☐ What changed in you after it?

2. Name the “Snapped Rope” in Your Story

The moment something you trusted broke under you.
☐ What failed unexpectedly?
☐ What scar or lesson did it leave?
☐ What did you rebuild stronger?

3. Find Your “Dying Ground"

(from the Art of War passage)**
☐ When were you forced into a moment where staying the same wasn’t an option?
☐ What did you choose when you had no choice but to fight?
☐ What part of you was born there?

4. List the Ghosts Who Trained You

Just like the climbers, warriors, escapees, and explorers in the library.
☐ Who are the authors, mentors, or figures who shaped your resilience?
☐ What did each one teach you about endurance, courage, or mindset?
☐ Which of their lessons do you still carry?

5. Map Your Three Fires

☐ What are your three defining fires?
☐ What part of you did each fire forge?
☐ Which fire still burns the brightest?

6. Honour the Version of You That Survived

(Like Simon climbing out of the trench, learning to fall, or reading until his hands went cold.)
☐ What did a younger you survive that you never properly acknowledged?
☐ What did they teach you that still protects you today?

7. Declare Your Next Ascent

The blog ends by stepping into the future.
This is your step.
☐ What impossible challenge are you preparing for now?
☐ What fire inside you will get you through it?
☐ What’s one small step you will take this week?