The Moment Where Everything Changed
Speaking on the theme Catalyst at Speaker Slam® in Toronto on Jan 29, 2019, Alexis Dean took the stage with a five minute story.
Transcript
what if the moment you're waiting for to change your life isn't about the moment at all eight years ago I was living on an island off of Hong Kong and I got a phone call in the middle of the night it was my mom calling from Riverside Hospital in Toronto come home she said your dad's dying I raced to the airport and I made it home in less than 24 hours and when I got to the hospital my dad was still alive and his eyes were open but he didn't have a lot of life left in him after a 20-year battle with Parkinson's disease his
time on earth was coming to an end so my family gathered in and said our goodbyes and we thought that this this was it well my dad whose motto in life was never give up just wasn't ready to give up it was the first time in a long time we all been together as a family my brother and his wife had flown in from the west coast and I had flown in from Hong Kong and my mom was there and he just wanted to be together with all of us so we hung on have you ever watched a person starve to death now imagine that
person's your dad my dad was my person growing up he taught me how to ride a bike how to swim how to paddle a canoe how to ski down a mountain he picked me up at the side of the road when I ran away with my little blue suitcases a little girl and when I was having a bad day take me to baskin-robbins for our favorite rocky road ice cream we spent the last week of his life listening to his favorite music John Denver on repeat and it was beautiful and it was awful and not just because of John Denver we watched him as he
went from the man that we knew to someone that was on his way out and slowly he deteriorated in front of her eyes he couldn't eat and he couldn't drink but he just wanted to be there with us so we hung on on what would be the last night of his life I slept in his hospital room and in the world the night when the nurses came to check on him I woke up and the curtains were drawn open and there was a full moon in the sky and my dad just lay there looking at it and I sat up and I held his hands
and I told the mold of things that I'd wanted to say I told him that I was sorry I'm sorry for running away to the other side of the world and I was sorry that it wasn't there for him and even though he couldn't talk he squeezed my hand and he looked at me and I knew that I was forgiven and the next day with my brother and my mom and I holding his hands my dad took his last breath that week together and my dad's death and changed my life for about two weeks and that's not because I'm some kind of a horrible monster
a robot with no feelings it's because temporary change isn't real change and because two weeks later I was on another plane taking another job in Costa Rica this time looking for another experience another adventure another moment to change my life I lived in ten countries in ten years I saw the Sun Rise in the summit of Mount Kinabalu I went to the Arctic and I saw herds of wild musk ox and I skinny-dipped in the Arctic Ocean and I searched with professional surfers in Nicaragua and Australia and Morocco and I jumped out of a plane five times at 10,000 feet over New Zealand and I
swam with crocodiles in Peru and in Borneo and all of those things were amazing but none of them were the moment that changed my life and then four years ago on the last day of a 10 day silent meditation retreat in the jungle in Thailand I was walking from the dorm to the final meditation and a Firefly flew right up in front of me and I haven't seen a Firefly since my dad died and I was totally stunned and I stuck out my finger and the Firefly landed right on the tip of my finger and I was so shocked I completely forgot where I was
and I broke my 10-day vow of silence and I said dad and of course it wasn't him and as soon as I saw dad it was gone and it didn't matter because that wasn't the moment either and then three days later I was sitting on the beach with some friends and I was drinking a beer and thinking a little bit about life and I thought to myself what if it's not about all those moments what if the moment that changes everything is just the moment that I decide to change because it wasn't the beer in my hand and it wasn't the sand between my toes
and it wasn't the kaleidoscope of colors across a sunset sky it was me I was the catalyst I decided to change my life because the moment that changed my life is the moment I just decided and the ironic thing is I came home to Canada and I started this amazing event in this great community of female entrepreneurs and we take them on unforgettable adventures and unforgettable locations and we share all of these unforgettable moments but we know that none of those moments or the moment that will change their life because the moment that changes your life is the moment you decide to change
Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.