William Shatner - Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder

Boldly Go

William Shatner

With Joshua Brandon

Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder

My familywhich includes my daughters, my sons-in-law, and grandchildrenhas a new member. His name is Clive. Clive is a step into the future. Unbeknownst to him, the world is changing rapidly. The recipient of all those changes will be Clive. This book is dedicated to the Clives of the world, who are being born into a maelstrom of activity. If we are diligent enough given all the new, wonderful things that are being invented even as you read this book, the world as we know it may continue to exist. That will be up to Clive and company. I wish them well.

The cosmos is also within us. Were made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.

C ARL S AGAN

Knowledge feeds me. Its as necessary to my existence as oxygen. It thrills me.

Long before Gene Roddenberry put me on a starship to explore the galaxy, long before I actually ventured into space, I had been gripped by my own search for knowledge, for even a fraction more understanding than Id had before. Perhaps, even more, for meaning. If I never succeed, never discover the answer to the age-old question of why, to be always learning, always wondering well, the quest itself keeps me vital. I get a tingle down my spine when Im presented with an opportunity to learn something new, a daily occurrence for me, even at ninety-one years old. Open your eyes, your ears, your mind, and youll quickly be overcome by the wonder that surrounds us. I am never so thrilled as when the word wow escapes my mouth. Its an almost involuntary expression of childlike delight at learning something new. I probably say wow more now than when I was a child, and I am absolutely enchanted by that fact.

These wow feelings are not all intellectual. I could sit at home reading, hour after hour, immersed in knowledge, but thats not enough. To me, experiences must be felt. They must be lived. We need to reach out for love as well as fear if we want to stay vibrant.

Shortly after my ninetieth birthday, I went swimming with sharksin the most dangerous and frightening of ways. I was invited to be a featured guest on an episode of Shark Week. My philosophy has long been to say yes to new possibilities. The adage that youll regret the things you didnt do may be a clich, but I really believe it, so I strive to answer the phone when opportunity calls. Soon after accepting the offer, I found myself on a boat, ready to go into the water with fifteen-foot tiger sharkssome of the most ferocious beings in the ocean, second only to the great white.

The dive organizers had dressed me in a wet suit, complete with scuba gear. I had dived many times in my life, so I was familiar with the accoutrements, but my previous experience could not have prepared me for what lay ahead, and what lay beneath. The guides threw ground bait (or chum) out onto the surface of the water to attract the fish they were looking for. In this case, sharks. Right away, we succeeded in enticing some smaller sharks to the surface.

There are two difficult points in this exercise, announced our Bahamian guide, Neal Watson. Going into the water, and coming out. Because all of these sharks on top of the water are looking for chum, and if they think youre their chum, they might bite your ass.

Great. These chummers are not really my chums in the traditional sense, I thought.

You take the same risk getting out of the water, because the last thing to disappear out of the water is your ass, so they might want to take a bite out of that.

Wonderful. I dropped down into the water and sank forty feet to the ocean floor. Right in front of me were four massive tiger sharks. Suddenly, being on the surface with my chums didnt seem so bad. Neal came down with us, and I felt a modicum of comfort knowing hed spent his whole life doing this. He was a real pro.

Then again, my brain chimed in, things only have to go wrong once.

In front of us, one of the handlers fed the sharks to keep them in the area (its better TV if they dont swim away). I watched as each shark made a beeline for the handler, who would pull out of the way at just the last minute, allowing the shark to grab its food and pass by.

I sat down on a rock in the sand, watching with awe and a great deal of fear as these massive creatures swam around me. When they opened their mouths, the sharks appeared to have fangs that looked like something out of a horror movie. One of the handlers had positioned himself behind me, and later explained he did so because tiger sharks are ambush predators, who like to circle around and get you from behind. He literally had my back to prevent an attack from the rear. Fantastic.

At one point, the tiger sharks started coming toward us, taking particular interest in one of our cameramen. One moved at him like a charging dog. I was able to think only two things in that moment. First, At least the shark isnt charging toward me! And second, What the hell am I doing down here at ninety years of age swimming with sharks? Why on earth am I doing this?!

The best answer I can come up with is that I dont know how not to be doing. I really would regret not giving myself a chance to experience something new and to learn in the process. Ive spent my entire life taking what seem to be unnecessary risks. Ive done things that should have killed me. Ive been skydiving, even though Im afraid of heights; I literally screamed all the way down. My fear of doing it was very real, but my fear of not doing it was worse. Its as if I have an inverted instinct for danger. My mind doesnt run screaming away from it; it somehow forces me to run toward danger.

Years ago I was making a film called Disaster on the Coastliner, starring Lloyd Bridges, Raymond Burr, and other heroic actors of the age. We were shooting on a deserted Connecticut rail line, which we were using for a big action sequence with a moving train. (You didnt think I was going to give you the whole shark story up front, did you? Im an actor; we have to create suspense!)

In Disaster on the Coastliner, my character had to run across the top of the train, making a mad dash across to the engine compartment to rescue Paul L. Smiths character, all the while being pursued by a helicopter. This was clearly going to be a hell of a stunt.

I asked the director, Richard C. Sarafian, How are you going to shoot this?

He said the stuntman would do it in the wide shot, then he walked over to check the camera setup. Okay, but I really wanted to know how he was going to do the close-up.

I watched the stuntman, and I can tell you, this was one brave guy. The train was going about forty miles per hour, and he was bent over against the wind. Now, Im a pilot, so I could tell that the stuntman was creating an airfoilthe wind coming at him was lifting him slightly off the surface of the engine. Its not dissimilar to flying a single-engine Cessna 150; once youre going about thirty to forty miles per hour, you already start to get lift. It must have been terrifying for the stuntmanhe was basically a light aircraft at this point, with none of the controls!

They got the shot and it looked terrific.

Now I said to the director, Okay, how are you going to shoot