I hunted with a bow and arrow. I was quite proficient. I actually competed in the Cobo Center in Detroit. But now I was invited to hunt wild pig on Catalina Island. “Yes,” I said, of course. In this instance we did intend to eat the animal. I saw a wild pig and I launched an arrow and struck him. The wounded pig ran into the thick brush, creating a tunnel. I was with a guide, who was carrying a gun because a wild pig is a large and dangerous animal. It can kill a man. The guide said to me, “Here’s what we are going to do. I’m going to circle around to the far end of the brush. When I’m in position, you go into the tunnel and flush him out the other side. I’ll shoot him.”
Once again it didn’t occur to me to say no. This was all being filmed! Or, more logically, what I should have said was “I’ve got a good idea: You go in that tunnel and flush him out, and I’ll wait on the other side and shoot him with my bow and arrow.” Instead I said yes. I didn’t think I had a choice.
I walked into that hole in the brush. It was so thick it was impossible to turn around. The only thing I could have done was back out or, if I were being chased by a wounded pig, run for my life out. It was so dense that the cameraman couldn’t follow me in. Or perhaps, as I now think of it in retrospect decades later, the cameraman was too smart to follow me in. Instead he shot pictures of the brush moving. “You in there, Bill?”
“I’m in there.”
“Okay, good. Keep going.”
I did as instructed; I was in fifteen feet, twenty feet, when I suddenly realized I was trapped. I was in a tunnel and I couldn’t get out. If that pig turned on me, as wounded animals will do, I was helpless. I was armed with a bow and arrow, which I couldn’t lift up because the brush was too thick.
Fortunately, I had mortally wounded that animal, which died in the brush.
But the symbolism of that moment is very vivid to me. How many times I have been in shows in which I felt trapped and unable to get out? Shows in which the whole cast is wondering, What are we doing here?
I have had to make choices every day of my life. I have learned not to wait for some Divine Inspiration that suddenly is going to appear to tell me the right answer, the right road to follow. It hasn’t happened yet. Instead I made a choice, and then I did everything I was capable of doing to make certain it proved to be the best possible choice for me. Life is cyclical, I’ve learned, and some of those choices I’ve made have been the right ones. And while I’ll never know for certain, I’m quite sure some of those situations might have turned out better if I had made a different choice.
But as I look back on my life there isn’t too much I would change about it. Those choices I made in my decades-long run, the right ones and the less right ones, turned out to have made very little difference taken as a whole. The important thing was to make the best of every decision and never look back on it.
There is one thing that has made a consistent difference thoughout my life: I said yes.
3. A Passion for Passions
ONE EVENING IN late April 2017, my wife, Elizabeth, and I went to our favorite Thai restaurant. The place doesn’t look like much, it’s in the back of a small mall, but I guarantee that it has absolutely the best Thai food you will ever eat. On our way to dinner I noticed one of the tires on our car needed air, so I stopped at what is literally the single best service station in the world, and without question the most brilliant attendant filled the tire with what was undoubtedly the finest air available anywhere on earth.
I’ve spent my life in the pursuit of passion. Passion is that … that thing, that stuff, which makes life worth living.
Here is another thing I’ve learned: Just living life isn’t sufficient. That’s not what life is supposed to be about. We have all been given this most extraordinary gift: We have been put on this planet for a span of years, and we need to do more with that time than mow the front lawn. Years ago Herb Gardner wrote a wonderful play, A Thousand Clowns, which then became a Jason Robards movie. It is the story of an iconoclast who is trying to teach his nephew the pursuit of passion. In one scene, as the iconoclast is trying to explain himself to a pretty social worker who believes his philosophy is a threat to his nephew, he tells her, “I want him to know the sneaky, subtle reason he was born a human being and not a chair.”
We have to yearn for things, we have to pursue them, and if we are fortunate enough to obtain them we have to savor them—and then set off on the next pursuit. I have always been a man of great enthusiasms. When I find something I like, I have a desperate need to share it with everyone I know. Truthfully, I know that the Thai restaurant probably isn’t the best Thai restaurant in the world, and that service station may only be the second or third best, and while the air was excellent there might be equally good air found in other places. But that doesn’t really matter to me. I can be as enthusiastic about the tom kha coconut soup at Talésai on Ventura Boulevard as I can be about any entrée I’ve ever eaten. And at that moment I mean it; I believe it.
* * *
I have gone through life finding and sharing my passions. There is a common mistake many people make: They equate passion solely with sex or with love. They are in endless pursuit of a “passionate romance” or a “passionate affair.” Meaning they are desperate to feel a deep connection with another human being.
Certainly one place to find passion is in a relationship, but it is a shame to limit passion to that. The pursuit and enjoyment of passion, however the hell you want to define it, is what life should be about. When somebody asks you what it is you are searching for in life, your answer better be passion. By definition, passion is “the strongest of all emotions.” It is “a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement,” an “extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for anything.”
As I explained, my search for passion with a woman has been the driving force of my life. I have found it; admittedly at times I found it in the wrong places and at the wrong times. But I was fortunate to have had many passionate encounters. Some of them were limited in duration and scope; others lasted for a considerable time. And I felt the amazing intensity, the extraordinary feeling that I was exploring the outer limits of my emotions. That it couldn’t possibly get any better than this. This was it; this was what I had been searching for. I had reached the mountaintop.
Until the next time. The next mountain. I have great news for you: I can report to you from eighty-seven years old that no matter how passionate you are, you will never run out of it. There is no limited reservoir of passion. To this day, to this moment, I am still in the thrall of physical and emotional passion. You don’t have to hold any of it in reserve until the right person or Thai restaurant comes along. No matter how much passion you display, there’s a lot more where that came from—but only if you learn how to accept it and enjoy it.
Passion isn’t sex—although sex certainly can be passionate. Passion also plays an important role in the pursuit of an attractive woman or man. The passion of the chase. That song is right: “The Things We Do for Love.” The chase serves to heighten the passion, even if at times it is never more than a fantasy. And that feeling never goes away either.
So I know that physical passion. But I have seen and felt passion in so many other places. I often think of the amazing Christopher Reeve. I had met him briefly before the accident that turned him into a quadriplegic, though I certainly didn’t know him. But I knew we shared a love of horses. The problem with Chris was that his upper body was so muscular he actually was a little top-heavy. Many horsemen think that made it difficult for him to stay perfectly balanced on a horse, which may have been a factor when he was thrown from his horse.
After his injury, because of our shared love of horses, I wanted to offer my support and express my sympathy. I made an appointment to see him in the rehabilitation facility. He was in New Jersey. I went to the facility, and as I walked through the glass doors I saw him sitting in his wheelchair waiting for me. He was being held upright and he had a breathing tube in his mouth. As I entered, I felt a
sense of panic: It struck me that I was going to visit a man I barely knew. What in the world would we talk about? How awkward was this going to be?
The first thing I heard as I approached him was the battery-operated breathing mechanism pushing oxygen into his lungs. I was heartsick; this handsome, smart, vibrant young man reduced to depending on a device to breathe for him. There was a moment when I wondered, If this had happened to me, would I still want to live?
Air in, air expelled. I didn’t know what to do. I was lost. I couldn’t shake his hand. I couldn’t ask “How are you?” Where to start, what to say? Chris solved that problem for me. His first words to me were “Tell me about your horses.”
My horses? Well, of course. We spent the rest of my visit talking about our mutual love of horses. It would not be accurate to claim that I forgot his situation, I didn’t, but it no longer was the center of our conversation. For more than an hour we were two guys who were passionate about horses talking about them. As he had asked, I told him about my horses, and he responded with stories of horses he had ridden and loved.
And as we did, I realized he was as passionate about horses as probably he had ever been, and that love certainly contributed to keeping him alive. He was never going to ride again, he knew that, but he was savoring the passion of the chase.
I have a list of passions, things that fulfill me, that remain central to my life. It doesn’t matter what your passion is, as long as it exists. A life without passion is like a black-and-white movie; it lacks the potential richness. For me, my primary passion, like Chris Reeve’s, is horses. The pursuit of that passion continues to fill my life.
I own horses; I ride horses; I breed horses. I have no idea why a city kid developed this passion for horses, but it is real. There is never a time when I am sitting on a horse that my life is not fuller. I have progressed in the course of my life from sitting on a horse and hoping I don’t fall off to being something of a knowledgeable horseman. Riding well is a developed skill. The horse is a marvelous animal, able to express powerful physical emotion completely without intellect. Horses simply react to whatever is happening around them. They don’t think; they don’t filter information. They live entirely in the moment. They don’t think, Geez, a lion almost got me yesterday, and they don’t live in fear that the lion might return tomorrow. Instead they are thinking, I have to be alert right now; those bushes are moving; is there something there that might be dangerous to me? It’s a wonderful lesson for us; wise men try to teach it all the time. We can’t do anything about the past and we don’t know what the future will bring, so there is nothing we can do but live in the moment. You can take that step or stand still.
That is what horses have taught me. But in return I am saying to them, through my commands, I will keep you safe. Do what I tell you to do and you have nothing to fear. A horse and a rider, when working together, is the most extraordinary combination of strength and intellect. That is precisely why horses and human beings are so complementary, why we make such a powerful team when working together.
When working with horses, as Chris Reeve learned, there also is danger. It is essential to be aware at every moment how strong and powerful they are. One slight mistake can prove fatal. When riding a horse you have to be living in the moment, too. You can’t be thinking about a part you didn’t get, what you want to do tomorrow, the fear of failure. You do that and you’re done.
Admittedly, though, that ever-present danger is among those things that make riding so challenging and so rewarding. The first fear every rider has to face is falling off, and when it happens—because it will happen; everyone falls off at one point—you learn to deal with that fear and get right back on.
That day you get back in the saddle is the day you begin to become a rider.
The goal is to achieve a level of communication between the horse and the rider, which always seems to be just a little beyond reach. There is a language between the rider and the horse; at a certain level of expertise you are working together to achieve a common goal. It begins by establishing a hierarchy in which the horse understands that you are the alpha male and it must do what you say, as it would for the leader of the herd. Horses will question your ability to sustain that level of command, and you have to reinforce it firmly but not cruelly.
There is an expression popular in movies: A rider stays on the back of a bucking horse as long as necessary to “break” the horse. The meaning is to establish human dominance to the point at which the horse becomes almost docile. But the last thing anyone who loves horses wants to do is “break” one, rob it of its spirit. What you set out to do is channel that spirit into a compatible relationship. What I have been pursuing, with a passion, is a oneness between myself and my horse, a place at which we communicate with only subtle pressure. I have reached that place on certain occasions. I have hit it a couple of times, but it is a rare experience. It requires a perfection of balance, touch, experience, and total trust. It is as close to a Star Trek mind-meld as a human being and an animal might ever achieve. That feeling when we reached that point, when we were moving as one, is almost indescribable. And having experienced it, knowing it is possible, I want to feel it again, and again. So I continue to practice endlessly.
My passion for horses has changed my life in so many ways. More than thirty years ago, I was at the equestrian center in L.A. when I noticed a six-year-old girl whose mother had taken thalidomide while she was pregnant. This child, who had been born without hands and with only one leg, was sitting astride a horse. The horse was being led by two volunteers, one on either side so she wouldn’t fall off. She was holding the reins in her toes and she had the most joyful smile on her face. It was such a beautiful sight that I started to weep. I asked, “What’s going on?”
There was a charitable organization, it was explained to me, that funded therapeutic riding programs. I fell in love with this child and this charity. I could see the benefits of it in front of me. Horses, as I probably knew then but have since confirmed countless times, are amazingly sensitive animals with children and people in need. Some animals sense vulnerability and try to exploit it; horses become gentle. It is an amazing trait.
I decided immediately to get involved in that charity. Since then the Hollywood Charity Horse Show, which has been sponsored for years by Priceline.com and Wells Fargo, has become another one of my passions. For the last three decades we have been running this show, raising between $300,000 and $500,000 every year for several charities. We’ve raised many, many millions of dollars. The event consists of a five-day horse show followed by a Saturday-evening party featuring such stars as Brad Paisley, Ben Folds, Lyle Lovett, Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow, Randy Travis, Vince Gill, Wynonna Judd, and Neal McCoy, all of whom have volunteered their services. It has become one of the bigger horse shows of its kind in the country.
I’ve been fortunate to have assistants such as Kathleen Hays, who have done much of the heavy lifting in making this happen. The show is something my wife, Elizabeth, and I anticipate for months and from which we take great joy and satisfaction. The money we’ve helped raise has changed so many lives. Children who can’t walk get to experience the freedom of movement. I saw a child whose parents believed would never talk suddenly start speaking. I’ve seen children who were deeply withdrawn suddenly come alive with their love for an animal. It has become a foundation of my life.
Our mutual passion for horses also brought Elizabeth and me together. Both of us lost our spouse, and just as I did, she found peace in horses. And eventually we found each other.
I also have a passion for motorcycles. I’m as comfortable on a bike as I am on a horse. I have spent a good portion of my life riding. When I was younger, I would go out into the desert on a motorcycle every Saturday when I was shooting Star Trek. There was a clause in my contract prohibiting me from riding motorcycles or piloting airplanes. I did both, knowing that if something went wrong that contract would be the least of my concerns. We would ride the hills and
trails in the heat of the day, the cool of the night, and the darkness of the early morning. I have ridden through winter snowstorms and the summer desert heat. I often would get on my bike and ride up to Santa Barbara and back, more than three hundred miles, in a day. Once, while trailing the group with which I was riding, my bike hit a depression that might had been dug as much as a century earlier by a prospector searching for minerals. I took a bad fall. By the time I got my bike up, everybody else was long gone. The bike wouldn’t start. I was stranded in the desert heat, dressed in leather and wearing a helmet. My choice was between leaving them on and suffering heat prostration and taking them off and being burned by the sun.
For a reason I will never understand I decided to walk with my bike out of the desert. I pushed the bike up and down hills, sweat rolling off my body. After a considerable period of time I saw a man on top of the next hill, waving his arms for me to come toward him. As I followed his instruction, I found a steep downhill road. I got on the bike and coasted down that road—right into a gas station. No one else had seen that man or knew who it might have been, so given my Star Trek background I decided my life had been saved by an alien.
That was my story and I stuck to it. It resulted in considerable publicity, never a bad thing for an actor playing the captain of a spaceship. But even that accident did not deter me from riding bikes.
Riding a motorcycle and riding a horse have one significant thing in common: both require complete focus. Either on a bike or on a horse, you are riding on the edge of disaster.
As I’ve gotten older, many people have suggested nicely that maybe I should think about cutting out riding. They try to find subtle ways to talk me out of it. It’s very dangerous, they warn me. You might get hurt.” “I know,” I respond. “That’s one reason I love doing it.” I am driven by fear and anxiety from the moment I get on the bike to the moment I get off. Danger, fear, anxiety—these are among the primary sources of my passions. Without them, I would no longer be enjoying my life.
Live Long and . . . Page 4
