Chapter 8: Courage

“That sure was one gripping account of what rippling means, Peter."

Peter seemed distracted and did not respond. He was fumbling his cell phone out of his pocket and put it on vibrate only.

I felt I had a lot to say about his latest story.

"You were there in Singapore that fateful evening in the concert hall to watch firsthand how Michelle’s intensity transcended her agony and then her own death. The comparison with ether filling up a vacuum was masterful. Michelle's spirit indeed propagated throughout an entire nation."

Kristina Vikander had been waiting impatiently for me to finish.

“Yes, I agree, rippling does not get any more real than that! It must have given her strength to know that others would live thanks to her donating her organs. One hell of a story, Peter. Poignant, and right on the mark.” 

Peter just nodded and looked forlorn. 

But Kristina was not ready to let it go just yet. She had told me before the session that she had been intrigued by his detached style and she wanted to get to the bottom of what was bothering her about the startling cool-headedness in his story.

“Peter, if I may. You write Michelle’s narrative in a very reserved manner, but at the same time, you seem deeply involved. Why use this restraint in the writing?"

She waited for a reaction but none was forthcoming, so she continued.

“You formulate your sentences with surgical precision and you bring your points across in a laser-sharp manner. Yet I can almost smell the disinfectant, so to speak. Are you aware you seem to decontaminate your stories before you bring them out in the open?"

No answer. She was now quickly coming to the end of her patience. She let out a deep sigh while speaking.

“Peter, what I'm trying to get at is this. You want to show compassion but you channel your emotions in such a contained way that the writing seems restricted. As if you allow yourself only to be an observer while you’re obviously eager to participate. Could it be that you feel threatened by the emotions brought on by your own writing?”

Again Peter remained silent and now I really wondered what was going on. 

From Kristina’s frustrated expression, I could see that she did not appreciate the way he was treating her. I felt for her, but on the other hand, she still had ways to learn that therapy is to the benefit of the patient, and not always a mutual exercise of intellectual gratification. 

Then Peter spoke out as if a thick fog had suddenly lifted.

“I apologize, ladies but I am sick and tired of feeling the way I do. All this time, I’ve been sitting here listening, trying to find the right words to describe the awful state I’m in. Best I can come up with is anxious badness?”

Kristina and I looked first at him and then at each other, with what must have been big question marks on our faces. 

He saw that more information was required.

“Damn! Help me bring my pain to the surface. It drives me crazy that it’s always there and yet it’s just beyond my grasp. I want to reach down to the bottom of the pit and let the black despair come up. I am ready to cut and drain the abscess.”

He ran both his hands through his hair, then held his face in his hands and looked at us both, relieved it seemed, that the words had finally come out. 

I felt inadequate that I had not picked up on his bottled-up tension when he had first entered my office today. How could I have missed that?

But the important thing now was that he was finally ready to deal with his worst fears, so I jumped in the deep end.

“What strikes me, Peter is that you often shift between on the one hand being this controlling person, driven by pure logic, and on the other hand being fair game for your repressed emotions which spiral up and overwhelm you completely. Is the latter an accurate description of what is happening here today?” 

“Yes, Doc, this is very real to me. These undercurrents take me away.”

“You called it anxious badness. Are you aware Peter, that’s a fair definition of guilt?”

“Guilt?” 

He looked surprised and intrigued at the same time.

“I take it that with badness, you mean evil, right? Maybe we even could call it sin, given the sensitivity for all things religion which you developed when you were a boy?

“Yes, it feels like a voice inside is constantly judging and blaming me. Absolution seems out of reach, to put it in a Catholic context.”

I walked up to the whiteboard on my wall and drew a triangular shape which I divided up into several horizontal sections.

“If you look at the pyramid of consciousness Peter, you will see that guilt and fear make up the very base levels. When you are down there, in those low egotistic states, your energies are drained by a constant struggle for emotional survival."

I wanted him to realize that his state of mind is dynamic, not static. That he is an actor in all of this, not just a victim.

"You call it undercurrents, and rightly so. It is very true that you cannot control these inferior feelings, they run you. There is no space for anything else down there. That state feels utterly compulsive and it can drive you to despair.”

I had his full attention. He looked at me with a mix of hope and anguish.

“But then again, Peter, that very suffering has the power to make you want to break free of it.”

His expression cleared, so I kept going.

“Anxiety has a function, Peter. It’s an essential reminder of your aliveness. You’re learning your lesson the hard way but do not doubt that there will be a pay-off down the road."

"Do you mean that my fears are actually pushing me upwards?"

“Ever since you stopped drinking, you have been fighting your way up to a more positive mental state. I believe you are now ready to let your demons go.”

Rather than seeing this argument through to its logical conclusion, he switched gears.

“You talk about guilt, Doc. But what do I have to be guilty about? I am fighting like hell to stay sober. I am working day in day out to provide for my family, to be a good husband and father. But the more I try to make amends for what I have done wrong during my drinking years, the further away atonement seems to be. That drives me f*****g crazy.”

“Those feelings of guilt are for sure not caused by anything you do or not do in the present, Peter. As you know, you are doing very well in terms of recovery and I admire how you travel the world and still stay on top of things at home."

I could tell this brought him some relief, but it would be short-lived if I could not drive my point home.

"The self-accusations are just negative programming from your past, Peter. They are old recordings your ego keeps replaying, with the outside world as a punishing bad parent and you as a helpless and hopeless victim.”

“Old recordings…”

“Yes, Peter, that is correct. It is time now to throw those tapes away because they are archaic and irrelevant.”

I wanted him to understand that happiness is a decision. It does not just happen, you need to make it happen.

“Now that you have made the commitment to stay sober Peter, you have come to realize that you can aim for real well-being. You understand deep down that it is not your destiny to simply grin and bear the pain of your negative emotions. Real freedom in the psychological and spiritual sense is within your reach. And I think you want this badly. The next step is actually deciding to go for it.”

Peter nodded slowly.

“It is up to me, Doc. Really?”

“Yes, Peter. It is up to you, but you have to clear some roadblocks to get there. You’ve got a taste of what it means to feel good again and this triggers anger in you because you want to get rid of the old programs but you do not know how."

"So this guilt I feel is nothing but a reflex from the past?"

"Yes, a critical voice in you still finds fault with even your most basic human drives. I can see that the mere mention of the words sin and guilt bring back instant repulsion. You feel you deserve to leave all this old pain behind you, yet it still has the power to cut you down to size. Am I right?”

His face showed that we were on the same page. 

“I am breaking my head over this, Doc. I do not know how to let the past be the past.”

“And as always, you’re using your rational mind to put yourself above your baser emotions by intellectualizing everything. It’s funny that you use the expression breaking my head. By agonizing over this, you keep suppressing instead of facing your pain."

"I think too much, I know. So what’s next, Doc?"

"You should bypass logic for once and try to go one level higher, one which is now clearly within your reach.”

“Which level is that?”

“Courage.”

“Courage?”

“Yes, courage and anxiety are two flipsides to the same coin. With a dose of courage, you can find it in yourself to face the fears you have subdued for so long, and to handle them until they no longer have a stronghold over you."

"That is exactly what I want, Doc. But you need to show me how."

"You need to claim back your own powers, Peter. Confront your terrors head-on and stare them down. Then move on, expand your view of the world and enjoy new experiences. You will see the anxiety will run out of energy and dissipate.”

I could tell from his body language that he found this direct confrontation a precarious proposition. All his earlier talk about draining the abscess was clearly hard to put into practice.

“Peter, I am not being flippant here. Even if this feels like a very risky path, you should nevertheless take it.”

He nodded slowly.

“Remember our Mt Everest analogy? This is your window of opportunity to ascend further to the top, because the sun has just come out from behind the clouds. You have a narrow but clear corridor to the summit."

"Ok Doc, so you're saying that by moving forward single-mindedly, by finding back the No Guts No Glory attitude from my younger days, my fears will eventually lose their power?”

"Yes! Trust me, this is a track you will want to follow all the way to the end. And that end could be happiness or at least peace of mind.”

“How do you know that I have access to that kind of courage, Doc?”

“The courage is there, Peter, I can see it in your eyes. We would not be talking about this if deep inside you would not want to conquer the fears. But until now, you did not seem to realize it was up to you, really, you did not see it as an option. What I am doing today, is to empower you.”

A new man was sitting in front of me. 

"I want to believe with all my being that what you just said is true Doc. All I want is to be on the move again, with new impetus and a sense of possibility.”

“Yes Peter, and I encourage you to give room to the intuition that there is something inside you that you no longer expected to find.”

“What’s that, Doc?” 

“You are in the process of rediscovering your authentic self, the part that you loved so much when you were young. It is that capacity in you to explore the world with open eyes, without the constantly disapproving voice playing in the background." 

He looked at me with eyes full of expectation. 

"That part of you has always been there, but it has been obscured all this time by the A-type ego, the job, the frantic lifestyle and the drinking."

It clearly resonated and Peter jumped on this.

“Lately, I’ve been experiencing a precious and vaguely familiar sensation. It’s hard to describe but it feels like coming home to a favorite place after a long, hard journey. It’s as if I’d forgotten all this time that there is more to me than my problems and my constant preoccupation with status and money."

"Tell me more Peter, what does it feel like?"

"It feels like innocence recaptured. These short, bright episodes have been few and far between but still, they give me hope."

“Peter, can you tell me exactly what triggers these brief windows of mental blue skies? Thoughts and emotions are like the weather, the sun is always there but sometimes you see it and sometimes you don’t.”

“Well, at times I hear music that moves me, and suddenly everything is ok. I am ok.”

I was very glad to hear this. It was not often that Peter would admit to the glass being half-full.

“Not just any song, mind you, but certain tone colors seem to bring me back to a time in my life before words existed, a time when everything was pure and simple. These true sounds and colors create the space and silence in me which I apparently need to open up to beauty.”

I let him finish his thoughts.

“Likewise, there are times when I am high up in the mountains and the view is out of this world. Or when I am simply blown away by the smile of a woman. That is when I get a glimpse of something greater. My mind seems to come to a complete stop and that absolute stillness is the gateway to a truth beyond mundane reality.”

He was staring at his shoes, deep in thought. He looked up when I spoke.

“You are describing the sensation of experiencing your real inner self, Peter. When the mind stops its incessant play of thoughts and emotions, when the ego falls away, when time seems to stand still, we get a glimpse of what is possible.”

"So you are telling me that it is within my powers to find back my authentic self?"

“Indeed, courage will let you take your focus off your daily narrative and look beyond ego, toward the intact parts of your personality, the stillness you just described. And you will become better and better at it. Your fearlessness will become stronger as your resolve to be equal to your anxiety will increase."

“OK Doc, you’ve made your case, I make a conscious decision to be happy. But how do I deal with the old guilt, though?”

“I believe you have a high propensity towards existential guilt, Peter. I think you feel you have disappointed the little boy in you who believed so hard in his own potential in his wonder years. You feel guilty because you did not enter the door that he held open for you. Instead, you opened another one, one that little Peter did not like. ”

“Damn, I think you’re right. I feel like I have betrayed myself, there and then.”

“In the eyes of little Peter, you strayed, you did not stay true to character. I think you regret that now, you wish you could have stayed more authentic.”

He nodded.

“Life threw you a number of ambitious challenges and you’ve accepted those instead. You rushed to settle for the first social role and matching personality that came within reach: that of the important businessman."

"But I thought that was my purpose in life, to be successful and make good money for me and my family."

"Yes Peter, but you became set in your ways and frozen into that self-important persona. You spent your life in bad faith, acting as if being an omnipotent manager is in fact your essence. Which it clearly is not.”

"This is heavy stuff, Doc."

"I understand that, Peter. But better to face up to it now. The ensuing guilt you have felt all this time for not living up to your true potential, you have tried to escape from that through diversions like thinking and drinking which eventually became addictions."

I could tell this was enough for one day. I wished I could exonerate him, but he and only he could do that for himself.

"Put all of this now in the right perspective and forgive yourself, Peter. Absolve yourself from the guilt of being you.”

Hubris by Peter Baer

With one eye closed, I look at the clock in my hotel room and I observe that it’s past 10 am. A splitting headache defines my being.

I get dressed slowly and painfully and decide to go up to the Octave Rooftop Bar on the 47th floor of the Bangkok Marriott where I’m staying. The sky lounge on the roof of the hotel offers a fabulous 360 view of downtown Bangkok. 

The bright-blue luminous cocktail bar is open but I am the only customer at this early hour. The bartender welcomes me in a cheerful way and picks up instantly on my apparent need for restorative liquid medicine.  

Josephine by London band Ritual is playing through the bar’s sound system and the melancholic tune sets the proper scene for me to nurse my hangover. The song’s elegant, understated sound is the perfect backdrop to the noise and pollution inside my head and below on the streets.

A Siam Mary is put in front of me, Bangkok’s version of the stalwart Bloody Mary. It’s one hell of a fiery drink which I’m sure will jolt my system into functioning again. This Thai version of the morning-after cocktail surprises with a red-hot twist of Thai chili, lemon, and coriander, blended with the usual suspects vodka, tomato juice, Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce.  This mixture will have to double as my breakfast and potent fix. 

While I’m stirring my cocktail, I marvel at the city’s skyline which presents itself as absolutely golden under a glorious morning sun. 

Bangkok's local name is Krung Thep, or City of Angels. It's where the immortal divinity dwells and the reincarnated angels reside, according to local religious teachings.

For the true believers, I’m sure from this spot you could reach up and touch the heavens if you wanted to. A gateway if there ever was one. 

I try to get a grip on what exactly occurred last night. What I know for sure is that I took a group of customers out for a night on the town but I have a hard time remembering the sequence of events. From 2 am onwards, it’s a blur.

I know for sure that we started out for cocktails at The Glaz Bar on the Plaza Athenee, a great place to chill and listen to the smooth sounds of brilliant jazz.  Bang in the middle of Bangkok, there’s no better venue than The Glaz Bar to start the evening.

But then the customer suggested we might go to a Gentlemen’s Club after dinner and someone suggested The Pimp, a very upscale nightclub, famous for its Coyotes. 

Coyotes are part and parcel of the upmarket Thai nightlife scene. Drop dead gorgeous girls whose main task is to entertain businessmen with sensual dancing and to be their hostesses for the evening. The ladies are far more classy than the girls in the notorious gogo bars around the city. 

While Coyotes are officially unavailable for anything but strictly dancing, unofficially, of course, anything is possible. A mere drink with a Coyote can cost a fortune, that much I’ve learned.

Our group arrived at The Pimp just after midnight. A line-up of supercars was parked ostentatiously in front of the red-carpeted club entrance. 

Looking at the 1966 Red Corvette Convertible, the Shelby Mustang 350 and the golden Maserati parked side by side, I remember I got slightly uncomfortable, worrying how exactly I was going to justify the expense of this G-Club to the company.

Once we got passed the towering doorman by means of a hefty tip, we entered a swanky space with deluxe sofas and armchairs scattered around a central stage. We were met by the lady of the house and led to the perfect spot that could accommodate our party of six. Immediately, we were accompanied by a matching number of hostesses and out of nowhere, the booze started flowing. 

The Coyotes assigned to us worked hard the next couple of hours to create a fun, erotic atmosphere by dancing and playing drinking games. Sweetly seductive within clearly defined house rules, they were drilled to keep our Champagne flutes filled at all times. One girl, who was clearly our Chief Purser for the evening kept asking me every half hour whether it was ok to order another Magnum bottle of Veuve Clicquot. By then, I had few inhibitions left, so I kept saying yes. 

As milestones go, I remember us moving from Magnum to Jeroboam-sized bottles, but after that point, I only have flashes and hazy images. 

I seem to recall watching my customer dancing wildly on the bar, joined by two of the girls and shouting to me this was the best evening ever. That seemed A-OK with me, at the time. I remember thinking to myself that it was important to keep the customer happy and I was clearly doing an excellent job.

But now I find myself here, on the roof of my hotel, trying to reconstruct how the hell the evening ended. On top of my killer hangover, my conscience is giving me a hard time because not only do I not remember when I left the party or how I got back to the Marriott, I also do not recall saying goodbye to my customer, let alone making sure they got back home safely. 

I decide to face the facts and take out the bill from the G-Club, which I seem to have folded neatly into my wallet. I blink a couple of times before I can focus on the total charge of one hundred thousand Thai Baht, which equals a whopping two thousand eight hundred US. 

How the hell could the check have worked out magically to an exact number like one hundred thousand Baht?  

I am staring at my very own signature at the bottom of the bill and wonder what possessed me when I signed this. No doubt Miss Purser convinced me at the time to round off to the nearest hundred. In this case that would have been the nearest one hundred thousand Baht. Well, she did a professional con job on me, you had to admire her skills of persuasion.

I am keenly aware of the fact that my company has zero tolerance when it comes to misinterpretation of expenses. The check from The Glaz Bar could justifiably be described as customer entertainment but a bar bill of a couple of thousand US from a Gentlemen’s Club called The Pimp would undoubtedly be seen as abuse and would trigger an awkward conversation between an HR representative and myself as the perpetrator. 

Well, what’s done is done so I decide to let it rest, for now, I will have to deal with it later. 

I take a deep breath of crisp morning air, and then quickly finish my Bloody Mary. For a moment I hesitate but then I decide against a second one as I want to get moving on my day. I need to go and see another customer across town. 

My head is still pounding and I have trouble focusing, but this is a common state lately.

Riding the elevator down from the rooftop lounge, I am confronted with a Russian glam couple in the process of seriously making out. For sure not holding back on my behalf, their hands are all over each other. 

He’s in a black Boss shirt and trousers with handcrafted Italian shoes, no socks. She’s in sky-high heels, a glittery miniskirt, and a short white fur coat. She’s a natural Ural beauty with light eyes, blond hair, and impeccable make-up. She looks twenty-one but I would not be surprised if she was only seventeen, if that.

While he holds one hand under her skirt, she smiles at me with a nerve that throws me off balance. Watching my apparent discomfort, she whispers in her boyfriend’s ear поз™ольте ему наблюдать  "Let him watch." He laughs and says ы дразните его  "You’re a tease."

I have a basic understanding of Russian and try not to blush. This must be the grand finale to their hot night out in Bangkok: forbidden sex in an elevator up to the highest rooftop bar in the city. A total stranger watching their public indecency can only add to the excitement.

While descending the forty-seven floors, I notice that lover boy has been holding her panties folded in his hand all this time. The girl gives me a defiant look and I know she knows I know. I can’t help myself and feel embarrassed and aroused in equal measures.

While stepping out, I notice the closed circuit TV cameras in the lift and it occurs to me that Thailand has ridiculously strict indecent exposure laws. I am sure the couple has been equally aware of the CCTV and that very fact just enhanced the experience. 

Russians are known not to give a damn and that stereotype just got reconfirmed.

Relieved, I get out on the ground floor while they stay in the elevator doing their thing. 

Recomposing myself, I check my briefcase and ask reception to quickly call a cab to take me to my customer meeting. 

I switch to business mode, and instantly I feel in control. I am back in familiar territory, I am the sheriff in this town. I can do this with my eyes closed. Or with a hangover, for that matter. 

There is not an obstacle I cannot find my way around when I am focused on the job.

My hotel is located in Thonglor, the most trendy neighborhood of sprawling Bangkok. My customer’s offices are on the other side of the city, though, so I tell my taxi driver to hurry up because I’m already late. 

Last night, before meeting my customer, I strolled out of the hotel to explore the many art galleries and funky boutiques of local Thai designers. But here and now in this worn-out taxi cab, I only see busy streets and traffic jams prohibiting me to reach my destination. 

I have a lingering sense that something is fundamentally wrong, but I cannot put my finger on it. I tap my driver on the shoulder and urge him to get a move on. 

I am aware I’m still in the frenzy of intoxication. The alcohol in my blood makes me act out the role of a hard-driving, efficient business man. 

But all this grandiosity, this self-glorification cannot prevent me from feeling more vulnerable than ever in my life. Why do I feel it can all come crashing down any time now? I feel like a fraud, this is not who I am. 

God, I need to break this ruminative cycle before I go crazy. To distract me, I look outside at the locals weaving through traffic on their scooters and the unavoidable tourists in tuk-tuks. Originating from an old-fashioned rickshaw during the second World War, a tuk-tuk is essentially the same but with a small engine fitted in. A tourist trap, and a dangerous one at that.

I look at the Raymond Weil watch on my wrist which my wife got me for my birthday last month in Geneva and it tells me with Swiss precision that indeed I am going to be late. This is unnerving because it means a bad start to the meeting. My customer, a man of tradition and appreciative of old-fashioned punctuality will see this as a sign of disrespect. Damn.

I put my hand on the driver’s shoulder again and tell him in a stern voice to find a faster route. The guy flinches. This whole situation seems to make him extremely jumpy. He’s probably used to driving tourists at a leisurely pace through this great city and now he’s here, taking this unforgiving guy in a suit all the way to Silom, Bangkok’s financial district. 

The cabbie keeps mumbling something incomprehensible, now clearly upset. But I do not pick up on his distress signals. Rather, I’m cursing myself for not having taken the Skytrain, the elevated rapid transit system recommended strongly by the hotel. 

Bad decision, but too late now. We are on Sukhumvit street, the main traffic artery to the financial district. There is no shortcut, I will just have to sweat it out and apologize to the customer for my lateness.

My driver looks frantically to the left, then to the right, then left again. I see he’s soaked with sweat which is unusual for a local. I notice with a shock now how his pupils are dilated, betraying mental turmoil. 

I feel a sudden need to get the hell out of this vehicle.

But before I can say anything, the cabbie makes a wild turn to the left into an insanely narrow street. He accelerates to sixty mph and we reach the main crossroads at this really crazy speed without slowing down. 

I’m opening my mouth to tell him to watch out when I see her.

The little girl on the bike. The little girl in the red dress.

The image of the fiery red dress right in front of the car is instantly burned into my retinas. I cannot make a sound. 

I think I’m pointing my finger at the girl but I cannot be sure. In my peripheral vision, I see the face of the driver now expressing pure horror, knowing that bad karma is upon him. 

My heart skips a beat and then another. 

My mouth feels ultra-dry, I do not have enough saliva to swallow. I actually see the hair on my arms stand out while I keep gripping the front seat with my both hands as if I could stop the car that way.

In this one instant before impact, I see things with absolute clarity. It all makes dreadful sense. I’ve been on the wrong track. And this is what it has led to.

Exactly. What. I. Deserve.

The driver, now on auto-pilot and pure adrenaline, tries a desperate maneuver to avoid the girl. Defying gravity, he succeeds in swerving just an inch so he does not hit the child’s body but only the rear of her bike. 

The brutal collision catapults the child away with a velocity that I am sure will kill her. A wave of guilt rushes over me. I try to see where she goes but then our car hits a solid structure in the street.

My brain finds this a good time to point out the unstoppable force paradox: “What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?” 

I immediately see the error in my thinking since our cab turns out to be stoppable.

The crash is forceful and propels the taxi driver straight through the car’s windshield, out of sight. His right shoe is left sitting on top of the dashboard, as the last reminder that this was indeed his taxi. 

And his life.

I am in the rear wearing my seat belt and I feel several ribs break on impact. My face smashes against the back of the front seat and I taste warm leather. I try to see outside, but blood is running in my eyes, which is scaring the s**t out of me. Everything becomes a red blur.

A nasty thought pierces through the fog: “This is one obstacle you did not find your way around, did you?”

The car has wrapped itself around what turns out to be a Buddhist shrine, one of many in the streets of Bangkok. This simple fact does not help matters at all. The Thai are hyper-sensitive when it comes to their places of worship. Sacred ground and all that.

I try to open the car door but it will not budge. I smell gasoline fumes and agonize whether I will burn alive in this car wreck in a city far from home. I feel extremely nauseous and rest my head for just a moment against the front seat to find my bearings.

But immediately I feel hands pulling at my arms and legs. People are trying to save me, is the rather naïve thought that pops into my mind. 

Next thing I know, a clenched fist hits my jaw. The surprise of this event has more punch than the actual pain it causes. 

This does not make sense. No sense at all. I am a victim.

Before I can ascertain who has hit me and why, I feel a sharp object stabbing me twice in the left thigh. Two deep thrusts in exactly the same spot, that cannot be good. It occurs to me that I’ve never felt a knife into my flesh except for the harmless cut on a finger while cooking. I can now confirm the pain is excruciating. It feels like nothing for a second until the red hot pain sears through the wound. I cry out in pain and anger.

I hear police sirens very close by and the angry crowd surrounding the car seems to hesitate for a moment. But then it moves closer again, pulsating in and out of my view. 

People are shouting a word I do not understand. The police will later tell me it means child killer.

My hand instinctively tries to stop the bleeding of my leg. I can feel blood gushing out of the laceration. 

I black out for a second or so. 

When I open my eyes again, I see a single Thai police officer standing at a distance of less than a meter from my face but with his back to me. I move my head slightly trying to see more but this sends a bolt of pain all the way down my spine. This opens a new avenue of agonizing worry, I wonder whether I’m paralyzed from the neck down? I cannot feel my toes.

I notice that the cop is holding a gun and pointing it straight at the mob of people surrounding the crash site. He’s shouting quick words in Thai. I can sense from his tone that he is way out of his depths here. Not confident at all that he can keep the crowd from tearing me apart. 

His short warnings are met by the most guttural outbursts of anger I’ve ever heard in my life. It’s clear that this crowd wants me dead. A memory of reading about lynch mobs at crash incidents in Thailand flashes through my brain.

I hear a gun blast very close to my left ear when the officer fires a warning shot. My ear is ringing and my head hurts like hell.

I am convinced now that the leaking gasoline will catch fire or the angry posse will finally push through. Whatever gets to me first.

A strange thought occurs to me. 

I swear I will stop drinking and better myself if I make it out of here alive.

This is when my consciousness says enough already and I pass out. 

I have no idea how long I’m out. I drift in and out of an uneasy sleep. The moments I am awake, I think I am in a hospital, but I cannot be sure. I get a glimpse of light green painting on the walls and white neon lights above me. 

And I dream.

It is difficult to describe the deeply feverish nature of the dreams. 

I am unhinged. It feels as if continental drift below the surface of my consciousness causes my tectonic plates to collide. A tidal wave of unsettling images is flooding the seaboards of my sanity. 

This is one fragment of a dream I will remember till the day I die.

A massive battleship fueled by a colossal reactor engine cuts through the ocean. Somehow, I just know that it's the world’s largest destroyer and it is tried-and-true invincible.

Then, out of nowhere, the war cruiser is hit amidships by a ridiculously small torpedo, the size of a Cuban cigar. 

The ship is so large that at first, the hit goes unnoticed, with just a light tremble rippling up and down the five gargantuan decks of the superstructure. Eventually, a sailor notices a small hull breach. 

Normal operations are barely disturbed as the crew executes the emergency procedure for this type of minor incident. The ship itself seems to mock this poor attempt at a threat and only reluctantly can be made to slow down as if it has a mind of its own. 

After swift repairs, the captain confidently gives the order from the bridge to resume cruising speed and the warship accelerates until it again cuts through the waves at an amazing one-hundred knots.

Nothing happens for hours.

But then, the pipes with engine cooling water unexpectedly show leakage and have to be shut down. As a consequence, the core of the reactor heats up until it is flaming red hot. Without cooling, the reactor quickly melts down and deadly radiation spreads out from the belly of the ship. 

Everybody on board is exposed.  

There is no escape. Other vessels are hours away and instead of a green EXIT sign, the word HUBRIS is displayed in red neon above the only emergency gate. 

Thousands of souls are lost at sea.   

I wake up in a sweat with a deep-rooted feeling of foreboding. My leg hurts like hell, my nose feels broken and I have a hard time breathing. 

I hear noises surrounding my bed. I open my eyes and the first thing I see is the little girl. This time she’s wearing a bright green dress.

She is standing at the left side of my bed and she’s holding a small bouquet of wildflowers. Her face is serious but she does not look angry. 

I blink to make sure I am fully conscious. The girl is holding the hand of her mother who’s smiling down at me in a sweet, forgiving way. 

I meticulously look up and down at the girl and see that she has a band-aid on her right knee. 

Never before in my life have I felt such relief. 

It turns out that Kannika, that’s the girl’s name, was indeed catapulted from her bike but then landed just meters further in a makeshift clothing stall in the street. The racks full of colorful textiles broke her fall and she was unharmed, apart from a nasty cut on her right knee.

While I was unconscious, more police had come to cordon off the car wreck. Within that sealed perimeter, they managed to free me from the demolished cab. An ambulance then swiftly evacuated me to Bangkok’s Bumrungrad International Hospital at the far end of Sukhumvit Street.

It turned out that the taxi driver had died instantly upon hitting the shrine, head first. The autopsy performed yesterday revealed he had opiates in his bloodstream and was found guilty �" posthumously - of reckless driving under the influence of illegal substances. If he had lived, he would have gotten the death penalty under Thai drug law.

The perpetrator who had knifed me twice had not been captured, he ran off into the crowded streets. Same with the guy who broke my nose.

Four days later, I find myself aboard a Lear Jet 55 in a Medical Air Ambulance leased by the insurance firm to repatriate me for treatment of the sustained leg injury and a severe concussion, back at home in Switzerland.

On this hospital bed at thirty thousand feet up in the air, it feels like I got a second lease on life. 

I am humbled by what has happened, and I’m trying to deal with the guilt over the taxi driver's death. Yes he'd been on drugs but if I had not pushed him over the edge, all of this could have been avoided and he would be showing his great city to a tourist right now. I will have to live with that.

Even deeper guilt is there for all the time wasted. I have been on the wrong track for a very long time and this car crash was my Come-To-Jesus event. 

There is a new appreciation for life now. It is amazing that something that nearly killed me could  install such a powerful sense that a richer life might now be in reach. 

I do not need to be the overbearing, opinionated Alpha male forever. Enough already with this ego-driven narcissistic bullshit which is nothing but a composite of all my negative beliefs. 

Scripts that have been written for me a long time ago are obsolete and need to go now.

I do not need to earn a lot of money by being a hard-driving a*****e, I do not need to fly business class and have my vulnerable ego stroked with a Platinum Frequent Flyer card. I do not have to treat people like s**t to demonstrate my own importance.

What I am to become is now far more important than what I do or have. 

If I unconditionally confess of my guilt for having restricted my own growth, I feel a door can spring open. I’m determined to cultivate this newfound joy and try not to waste any more precious time on futile ruminations.

I am done with the story of me. All this time as an adult, I have been terrified of facing myself, escaping in frantic diversions like traveling and working. And drinking, of course, let’s not forget the drinking. Booze has been my instrument of choice for self-sabotage.   

This guilt I've been feeling can now act as a call from within, a guide to a better me.

While flipping through Bangkok’s only English newspaper The Nation, I cannot help but smile.

I recognize the pictures of Katya and Vlad, the Russian lovers apparently taken into custody yesterday at the Bangkok Marriott and brought before the city’s 2nd District Court on charges of sex in a public place. 

A German woman who found herself trapped in the elevator with them filed a formal complaint and the rest is history.

Author's Note

Version 4 uploaded.