The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 144: A Legend In His Own Mind

Episode Date: November 12, 2019

He was destined for greatness.  No one knew it but him.

This is the way I heard it. In his prison cell, the disgraced tax collector awakens from a dream, the same dream that's haunted him for nearly 20 years. In the dream, he's on horseback, returning from a great battle. Weary and wounded, he's a scarecrow of a man, riding towards home as a fair maiden rushes to greet him, and his grateful countrymen gather in the streets to shower him with glory and chant his name, the name of a conquering man.

hero. The dream first came to him when he was a young scholar long before he was falsely accused of mishandling the crown's money and thrown into the king's jail. Back then, the dream had felt like a divine prophecy, a sneak peek at the man God wished him to become. So vivid was his dream, so certain the feeling of providence that accompanied it, that the young scholar had awakened from it and immediately join the army, eager to find a glorious quest so that he might fulfill his destiny. He didn't have to look far. The Ottomans were raising hell in Europe, and the Pope had called upon the faithful to vanquish the infidel once and for all, a heavenly cause, if there ever was one. So the young scholar swore an oath to his king and prepared to march into hell, which is precisely

where he found himself a few weeks later, specifically in the Gulf of the Gulf of the United, which is precisely where he Gulf of Petrus, where the Battle of Lepanto was about to commence. Lepanto was the last major naval engagement to be fought entirely from rowing vessels, and it was an absolute bloodbath. Over 600 galleys came crashing together, filling the sea with wooden ships, packed with Muslims and Christians determined to hack each other to bits. It said that the water was so thick with ships, it was less like a naval battle and more like an infantry action

fought from floating platforms. Combatants leapt and charged from one blood-soaked deck to another, praising their respective gods, firing their guns at point-blank range, slashing their way to glory. Forty thousand men died that day, and the young scholar was very nearly among them.

He was shot three times, twice in the chest, and once in his left arm, a terrible wound that would leave him forever, crippled. But when the smoke cleared, the Muslims were defeated, and this valiant warrior was headed home, where his fair maiden awaited, and his countrymen stood by to shower him with glory and chant his name, the name he heard in his dreams, the name of a conquering hero. Alas, there would be some detours along the way. For starters, his ship was captured by Barbary pirates, who

sent the wounded soldier below decks to row their ship with dozens of other galley slaves. With only one good arm, his rowing skills were deemed subpar by the corsairs who whipped him mercilessly for weeks on end. It was a brutal period, but the young soldier never lost hope because even under the lash his dream persisted. Night after night it comforted him, reinforcing his belief that greatness was his destiny and suffering a small price to pay. Thus, when the pirates cast him into a dungeon in Algiers, pending a ransom from his king, he didn't despair. He did what any self-respecting hero would do.

He tried to escape. His first attempt failed, and the whipping he received in return very nearly killed him. Undeterred, he tried again and failed again, which led to, more whipping and more suffering. His third attempt to escape also failed, as did his fourth, both of which were followed by lots and lots of lashing, until the wounded soldier was very nearly skinned alive and left to rot in the bowels of that God-forsaken Algerian pit of despair.

But even then, even there, the dream stayed with him, a nightly reminder that he would one day find glory. or that glory would one day find him. Five years later, the soldier was finally ransomed, at which point he returned to his home, more dead than alive, and sure enough, just like the battered warrior in his recurring dream, he rode through the countryside, weary and wounded, a scarecrow of a man. But when he came to his hometown, there was not a country's not a country's side, weary and wounded, a scarecrow of a man. there was no one there to greet him. No, fair maiden, no one to shower him with praise and chant

the name of a conquering hero. And yet the dream still persisted. Night after night, he saw himself astride his horse, basking in the glory of some great accomplishment. But what? With a ruined arm, his days of soldiering were over. Perhaps he could distinguish. himself as a diplomat or an ambassador working for the king for whom he'd already sacrificed so much. The king refused him an interview. Very well. Perhaps he could find greatness with a pen. Perhaps he would reinvent himself as a man of letters. My left hand he famously declared has been sacrificed for the glory of my right.

To prove it, this disabled veteran spent a few years writing some plays that no one saw, some poems that no one read, and some essays that no one understood. Finally, with bills piling up, he put down his quill and accepted a series of jobs that offered an actual paycheck, a bookkeeper, a supply clerk, a salesman. Alas, he was fired from all of them. He simply couldn't bring himself to care about such mundane vocations. Finally, hungry and desperate, he took a job as a tax collector, a position from which he was also fired, but not before being falsely accused of mishandling the king's money,

which brings us back to where we began. In a prison cell, a disgraced tax collector awakens from a dream. The same dream he's had for nearly 20 years, a fairy tale of a dream that's consumed his life with delusions of grandeur, leaving him broken, penniless, and utterly disillusioned. In that moment, the man who failed at everything he ever attempted, tried something new. He quit. He vowed to stop seeking his own greatness and, write about the dangers of dreaming it. The result?

A story he believed no one would read. A cautionary tale written in prose instead of verse. A fable of sorts that ushered in a new literary genre called fiction and went on to become what many have called the very first modern novel. In short, he wrote. the story of his life. And today, 400 years after its release, it's still the most popular non-religious book of all time, with over 500 million copies sold. Not bad for a disabled veteran who dreamed an impossible dream, a dream of greatness that finally came true

when a scholar and soldier named Miguel de Servantes gave the world a character forged in his own image, a quixotic night on a glorious quest that only he could see. A man scorned and covered with scars who strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable star. A legend in his own mind from a place called La Mancha, a scarecrow of a man called Don Quixote. Anyway, that's the way I heard it.