By: Jared A. Van Driessche
My young son and I at Bruce Lee’s grave
That inspiration, mixed with the survival traits I had already developed, shaped who I would become. One of those traits was my lack of fear. My abuse from my father was so severe that I began to enjoy confrontations and leaned into them because nothing was scarier to me than my own father. I’m not claiming to be some Billy Jack badass. I’m saying confrontation doesn’t frighten me because the worst that could happen to me in any conflict is my own death and demise. For some reason, the end of me gave me comfort because I wouldn’t have to walk in this world anymore.
All humans have elements of fear, but mine aren’t aligned with the rest of the world. For example, I did not value my own life or even living. I hadn’t for a very long time. I do not believe in suicide because it feels like a pussy way out (used here in its oldest meaning for cowardly or weak), and I’ve seen how it destroys others who are left behind. So how could I channel that mindset into something productive? I could face fear head-on calmly and help those people who have legitimate threats against them. I could provide comfort, safety, and security. That gave me a dopamine hit, a natural high I have never felt before, because for once I felt like I was doing something for the greater good beyond myself, and I needed a way to self-rescue.
My lack of fear gene is strange. I’m not the biggest fan of heights, but not because heights scare me. It’s because with my wild personalit,y I have to convince myself not to jump when I’m up there. I always want to jump because in my mind, maybe I will be able to fly. Sounds fucked up, right? It likely is, but this blog is about casting light on the dark shit we hide from the world.
Another reason I pursued this path is that I needed a career where I feel like I’m doing important things. Is that ego? Likely yes. But it’s also because I had (and to a certain extent still have) very low personal self-worth. I knew I needed to fight that with a purposeful career.
I was also tempered by ridicule from peers and teachers who thought that was an asinine idea and that I would never succeed. Why? Because no one had really heard of a career like that in my small town of Seward, Alaska. I took that as a personal challenge to fuel my goal. I wanted to prove the doubters wrong, and I did. But that doesn’t make me a hero, far from it. It just kept me alive and moving forward.
Even today, with all my therapy and self-help work, I still battle struggles like every human on the planet does. The only things I truly fear are my wife and two children getting hurt or dying in some tragic accident that I cannot control. Not much else scares me, not even the thought of my own siblings dying, because in my mind, my sole love and focus and purpose is my wife and our children.
Am I that cold? Maybe. But it is part of the truth.
Through this career, I also got an education traveling the world, being exposed to cultures and customs you could never learn in a classroom or a book. I’ve worked with some of the most powerful, influential, beloved, and equally hated people on the planet. Being in rooms where ideas and decisions truly shape the world has been one of the greatest gifts a broken man like me has ever experienced.
There are more scars, more lessons, and more truths that I will be sharing as this series continues if that’s what I decide to do. But know this, choosing this path was not about chasing a paycheck or a title. It was about finding a place to put all that pain, a way to make it useful, and that is something I will never let go of. All of that, the pain, the drive, the unlikely inspirations, is why I became a bodyguard, and why, even now, I stay one.
