The Fourth Fisherman: How Three Mexican Fishermen Who Came Back from the Dead Changed My Life and Saved My Marriage
224
The Fourth Fisherman: How Three Mexican Fishermen Who Came Back from the Dead Changed My Life and Saved My Marriage
224eBook
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Overview
what we found there was God.
And he was enough.
It was the subject of headlines around the world: Three Mexican fishermen in a small open boat without any supplies, drifting for more than nine months and 5,500 miles across the Pacific Ocean. Through blistering sun and threatening storms, they battle starvation, dehydration, hopelessness, and death. Their lifelines? An unwavering faith and a tattered Bible.
Thousands of miles away, Joe Kissack, a successful Hollywood executive, personified the American dream. He enjoyed the trappings of the good life: a mini mansion, sports cars, and more. He had it made. Yet the intense pressure of his driven and high-powered career sends him into a downward spiral, driving him deep into suicidal depression, insidious addictions, and alienation from his family. His lifelines? A friend and a Bible on the table between them.
Thoughtfully told with candor and humor, Kissack weaves together the incredible true voyage of fishermen adrift in the sea and his own life’s journey as a man lost in the world. It is a story that will buoy your spirit and renew your hope and faith.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780307956286 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The Crown Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 03/13/2012 |
| Sold by: | Random House |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Sales rank: | 752,892 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Joe Kissack is a speaker, author, screenwriter, film and television executive, publisher, and entrepreneur. His job descriptions cover a wide spectrum, from working on a farm and cleaning out refrigerated beef trucks to serving as a senior executive for Sony Pictures. His speaking engagements also vary, as he provides inspiration for charities,
churches, and business conferences. Joe lives in Atlanta with Carmen, his wife of more than twenty-five years, and their two daughters.
Read an Excerpt
If something dark was looming, I wasn’t aware of it. Not yet. Not now. I stood on the red carpet at the Emmy Awards, wearing obscenely expensive sunglasses. It was September of 1997, and my employment contract with Columbia TriStar Television was about to expire. I’d been invited to fly out to L.A. for some important meetings that would determine the next move in my soaring career. A seat at the Emmys was an extra perk, a glamour ticket in Hollywood.
I certainly looked the part: a thousand-dollar tuxedo, cuff links from Neiman Marcus, a Rolex Oyster Day-Date, Ferragamo shoes, and, of course, those sunglasses—three hundred bucks’ worth of eye candy.
I had “arrived” according to Hollywood’s standards, often calculated by one’s ability to spend outrageous amounts of money on items of little substance. Even knowing that, I was a repeat offender. And I loved every glistening gold dollar of this good life. After all, I’d earned it. In my tenth year with a major television studio that had promoted me five times, I’d climbed all the way to executive vice president, pulling down a big salary with incredible bonuses. My job allowed for marvelous vacations, dining in the best restaurants, and shopping at the coolest boutiques. I always traveled first class (concierge level, of course), and I received a car allowance that paid for my BMW 540i and later my Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet. I owned a six thousand-square-foot house, complete with a home theater and sound system that would straighten the hair on your legs. And, oh yes, I rode a Harley-Davidson—just because I could.
If I saw something I liked, I bought it. If something could make me look better, I got it. If a hotel wasn’t up to my standards, I found a better one. It was all about having the best. Not bad for a small-town kid from a blue-collar
family in Illinois whose daughters make fun of him for having worn the same plaid shirt in his first- and second-grade class photos! Standing on the red carpet was an exclamation-point celebration of a once-lost kid who now looked so sharp.
Of course, there was something else. My life was furiously driven by something deep beneath the surface. Something I didn’t know that I didn’t know.
Trying to survive in the television industry is like being on the TV show Survivor. You’re on a team, but the truth is, it’s every man for himself. With an average of four shows to pitch each year, I was giving more than a thousand presentations annually. It wasn’t brainiac stuff, but it was incredibly nerveracking. I had to be “on” all the time; tens of millions of dollars were riding on it. Sure, some days it was glamorous, but the second I closed a deal, I would start stressing about the next one. I felt only as good as the last big thing I landed. This despite some of my successes—Married…with Children; Mad About You; Walker, Texas Ranger; Ricki Lake. Of course, there was also that big one—Seinfeld.
My job was to license the rights of television programs to broadcast stations across the country, otherwise known as syndication. Whoever figured out that television audiences would watch the same program a second, third, or even seventeenth time was a genius. Syndication is highly profitable—and cutthroat. With only so many clients in each city and twenty other shows competing for the same limited time slots, it’s impossible to sell your show in every market. The expectation, however, is that you will. Every major studio had more than a dozen of us hired guns. We traveled to all 211 TV markets, four days a week, fifty weeks a year, from New York City all the way to Glendive, Montana, and every trip was destined, on some level, to fail.
But—and this is a big but—the money was fabulous. And most of us hired guns lived beyond our means, believing that as long as the money was coming in, the physical and emotional toll was worth it. Believe me, it is very difficult to walk away.
Much as I reveled in my red-carpet moment, I knew it was just another part of the dance. The invitation—the whole weekend for that matter—was one more perk the studio had pushed in front of me, knowing I wouldn’t, or couldn’t, refuse their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It was all calculated. They had me right where they wanted me. I was a guy once obsessed with a worn-out plaid shirt, who hailed from a town whose chief industries were canning peas and spinning yarn, and now I was raking in lots of dough (and needing it to keep up my lifestyle), rubbing elbows with American entertainment royalty, and looking like a million bucks.
One of the keys to successful red-carpet walking is to do it slowly, especially the final twenty yards before you get inside. The proper walk is important, because you’re supposed to project an aura of appreciation tinged with indifference, but never gratitude and certainly not awe. As an old coach once told me, “Joe, if you’re lucky enough to wind up in the end zone, act like you’ve been there before.” I played the part pretty well. I had rehearsed for this moment endlessly. I knew how to cruise through a five-star hotel lobby and into a waiting limousine with just enough mystery that I looked like I could be somebody famous.
Illusion is important in Hollywood. It’s carefully crafted on-screen; it’s carefully cultivated offscreen. I’d gotten the hang of it.
There on the red carpet, my lovely wife, Carmen, stood by my side, just as she had during my entire climb up the professional ladder. She was a rock and looked like a rock star. Among many things, she was an incredible mother and kept the family running like a finely tuned machine. “Very special,” her dad once told me, as tears welled up in his eyes. “That Carmen…she is a special one.”
Even though Carmen’s presence helped me project my grand illusion before the eyes of others, she was skeptical of the life I’d pursued. She had seen the wear and tear resulting from the demands of the job and tried to suggest that I needed more balance in my life. Carmen feared that I was being ground down to nothing and didn’t understand why I kept renewing my contract. She would encourage me with her cheerleader smile, attempting to give me confidence. “Joe, you’re a talented guy. You can do other things…” But I was like a suicide bomber who didn’t have the wires connected quite right, and I was determined about my mission. Even if it killed me.
I suppose I knew that I was pushing too hard. Earlier that week I had met with the head of television for the studio, and he asked me the classic interview question: “Where do you see yourself five, ten, or fifteen years from now?” I told him bluntly I wanted his job someday. It was positively ludicrous to think I could handle this guy’s responsibilities. He was ridiculously smart and operated as if ice water ran through his veins. It sounded good when I said it, though, and it was probably what he wanted to hear. Again, illusion.
I knew I was driven. But I had to be. The industry was intense: the farther you advanced up the ladder, the fewer the jobs—very few lateral moves. It was all about the next job, and there were only about six jobs at my level in the entire studio system. There was no workplace Zen back then. It was all tension, all the time. If you weren’t stressed and strung out, you would be replaced. Some guys could handle it—thousands of canned speeches, smiles, fake laughter, and contracts. I felt I could too. I was holding it all together. Besides, everything I held dear was riding on my ability to continue to climb, to succeed: my house, my car, my family’s future, my reputation. My sunglasses. The moment I stepped off that tightrope, it would all be gone, handed to the next guy in line. Every day on the job at the studio was, to my mind, another day I might be found out.
Some years before, to deal with the stress, I had tried seeing a shrink. There I’d learned a few things about myself, primarily that I had equated my success and lifestyle with my value as a husband, father, and head of household. I suppose I was looking for validation, approval, something to fill me up.
At one point the psychiatrist looked into my eyes and said, “Tell me about your father.” No one had ever gone there before, and I didn’t know what to say. So I never went back. I didn’t want, nor could I even begin, to have a conversation about my father. Not with anyone. Really, it wasn’t such a big deal, or so I thought. Everyone was chasing
something they wanted, the good life they desired, the status that would garner respect. I was no different. What if there were stresses? I just needed to manage them better.
And I felt I had. Look where I was! The sun was shining. Carmen was by my side. I was at the Emmys in Hollywood, about to re-up with my studio. I had made a name for myself.
We turned and began our slow, convincing stroll into the Pasadena Civic Auditorium for the commencement of the ceremonies. Yet, walking through all that dazzle and glitter, I could not see on the horizon the storm that was about to engulf my life. Through my sunglasses, the world looked sunny and rosy. But behind those lenses, my eyes betrayed lines of anxiety, worry, and stress.
We are so blind to our own stuff, blind to the storm bearing down on us. In fact, I was already adrift. I just didn’t know it.
Table of Contents
1 Red Carpet 1
2 The Fishermen 7
3 The Paddle 11
4 The Pacific 17
5 The Campus 23
6 Blood Brothers 29
7 Soul Mates 35
8 Life and Death 45
9 Lost 51
10 Choosing Life 59
11 Chossing Death 65
12 Rescue 75
13 Found 79
14 The Good News 87
15 The TV News 91
16 Peace and Pain 97
17 The Summer of Joe 101
18 Dichos De Mi Madre 105
19 Undertow 109
20 Plans 113
21 Faith 117
22 Machine Guns and a Flashing Yellow Light 125
23 A Flashing Yellow Light and More Machine Guns 129
24 What's News? 135
25 Signs and Wonders 137
26 A Different Breed of Sharks 141
27 Going Home 147
28 Electric Connections 151
29 Middlemen 155
30 No. Maybe. Yes 159
31 Nudges 163
32 Trust 171
33 His Plans 177
34 Which Story? 181
35 His Stories 185
36 "Keep Going!" 187
37 Standing in the Gap 191
38 Wisdom and Folly 197
39 Seeds 203
40 Buoyant 205
Epilogue 207
Acknowledgments 213
Notes 215
Interviews
1. Your story of rising to the top of your profession sounds like a dream come true, yet you were so unhappy. Where do you think things went wrong?
Foundationally, things went wrong very early in my life. In families where the father is misled-chances are that everyone in the family will be misled. Because of an "unsafe" childhood home, ruled by an alcoholic, I was born into and grew up in a constant state of survival. It created unconscious drive towards protecting myself and gaining any and everything for my subsistence. My professional life was just an extension of that mode of operating (except in our culture, especially in business, it is what is thought of as success). Often, a life on this course looks fine until it starts to come off the tracks. It seems that when things start to go wrong, they are going wrong in or very near the present moment. This is rarely the case, and the root cause of where things go wrong can be traced back to a time that seems disconnected to the present instance. Often we miss this because we don't know what we don't know.
2. Why do you think your wife, Carmen, stuck with you during your addictions and depression?
The short version is - she loved me. She is an incredible woman and the hero of this story. She prayed. She held out hope. She did and does the thing that rock solid women like her do - stick with knuckleheads who don't deserve to be stuck with. Millions of women are doing this right now, hoping that somehow, by some miracle perhaps, the men in their lives will come to their senses. Sometimes they do. And what they find is a woman who is the hero of their story.
3. You grew up in an alcoholic house. How do you think your two daughters were affected by your addictions and what have you done differently since your sobriety?
My children have been, and will continue to be, greatly affected by my addictions and that of the generational predisposition that my/our DNA carries with it and we have made a conscious decision to call it out of the darkness and shine a light on it. But, they have also been greatly affected by my sobriety. The truth of our past gives the next generation a chance to fight against it, without it having to be a secret. I bring it up often in our home with a simple statement: "Please allow me to remind everyone that our family comes from a long line of addiction and depression. Please proceed with caution!"
4. People often say you have to hit rock bottom before you can change. Do you think your spiritual awakening would have happened if you didn't hit that bottom?
I would tend to agree with that statement, but I can only comment as it relates to my experience and me. It is really hard for me to say what would or would not happen for anyone else. In my case, I was on a fine line between the continued living existence of this human body, and the end of its existence and the death of it. My spiritual awakening and the rock bottom seemed to have an interesting timing with each other to come at the same moment. However, I don't think everyone will or has to have it happen this way to them. We all make choices, and for the longest time I chose to ignore what I knew to be truth of where it was all heading. I did that up until the very moment of surrender. Some people do it sooner. I think they are the smart ones.
5. How have your non-religious friends reacted to your newfound faith?
It is kind of a mixed bag. Some have found it to be a reason to distance themselves: "Don't you think Joe has carried this God thing a little too far?" While others have grown closer: "We have been praying for you and wondering when God's grace and mercy would be showered down on you." The truth is, at least for me, it doesn't matter what anyone's reaction is. It is none of my business what others think about me. It is really none of my business what I even think about me. There is only ONE opinion of me that counts, and I know where I stand with Him.
6. You use humor throughout the book. Tell us about how you reacted when your house was on fire and what that symbolized in your life.
Ah yes. I used to be really funny. So it is not so much that I use humor throughout the book, but more like I just use me. It is just the way I see things. I am sometimes able to find the humor in even the most tragic of times. (Thank goodness I had the greatest editor in the world, Ken Peterson, to let me know when I had crossed a line.)
At the time of our house fire I was in a heavily medicated state - doing all I could to keep from feeling the excruciating pain of my great sadness, the unending fear and doom of my daily existence, and loss of control of a life that was once looked great. When I pulled into the driveway to see the smoke billowing out of the windows I reacted with sort of a default of "do something". I just needed to do something about it. My literal house was on fire but my metaphoric house (and everything in it) was on fire, too. It wasn't just falling apart in disrepair and going to crumble down one brick at a time. It was going to flare up and incinerate everything in my life like an atomic explosion. Mowing the grass was my attempt at radiation treatment.
7. Your search for the fishermen started out badly. Did you ever consider leaving Mexico and why did you stay?
Oh, I considered leaving on several occasions: when I first heard from my colleagues that I was on my own; when I first heard of the cannibalism; and when I got my expensive hotel bill and imagined the cost of it all. I also considered leaving when there were no seats on the flight I needed; when I heard how much the miraculous first class seat was; when I met the soldiers with machine guns; and when I saw the rough looking gang with machetes. For a normal person, those would be seven pretty good reasons to turn and run the other way. I wish I could tell you that I stayed because I had some great plan, but I didn't. I stayed because each time I tried to leave, something (or someone) countered the obstacle I was facing with a tiny glimmer of hope (or I am just really stupid). It gave me just enough courage to take one more step forward even though I couldn't see where my foot was going to land.
8. The media focused on some the questions around the fishermen's survival and you address the issues head on in your book. Why do you think the doubts began quickly after the rescue?
I have been in media for nearly 30 years. I have a pretty good understanding of what sells, which by the way, you don't have to be in media for 30 years to understand, all you have to do is look at what the media offers as "news". There is no such thing as "Journalism" in media today. It is mostly "Opinionism" with a few facts thrown in to make it sound like someone is doing their job as a journalist. The media companies use this "Opinionism" with a slant towards whatever precise demographic, psychographic, or like-minded constituency, which uses a particular media outlet and buys the products that are advertised on those outlets. There may have been legit "doubts" in the survival, but the "doubts" seemed to be fueled by an agenda to tell (or more likely sell) a "sensational story". If there were real doubts, wouldn't it make sense to investigate the doubts further, rather than just make a claim of something sinister and whipping it into a frenzy? If investigated, it could have easily been determined what the survival was, but that is not what the media did. If they had, they would have found out how outrageous their claims were.
9. You write about your relationship with your father, his alcoholism and you feeling that you could never be good enough. Did you ever resolve that conflict with him? And what advice, if any, do you give adult children who still struggle with unresolved issues with their parent or parents?
I have tried on many occasions to engage my father in this conversation and unfortunately have not been able to. However, I have been able to find peace over it. I have done what I know how to do, to reconcile. I started to realize that perhaps he did too, but it wasn't going to include any sort of a conversation on his part. He doesn't know how to do that. It is like trying to buy a gallon of milk at a flower shop. It doesn't exist there. Then a friend suggested that I start to see him through a different lens. God's lens. Once I started to do that, things changed. I started to see my father in a completely new way, perhaps the way that God sees him. It made me sad to think that this man had been wounded in such a way that made him the way he was. I was filled with sorrow for him. Soon, resentments and anger were replaced with a different set of empathetic emotions that eventually led me to forgiveness and grace, all without ever having one conversation about it with him.
Recently I received a letter from a woman from Oregon who was reading The Fourth Fisherman over the phone with her father, who lived in California. It was serving as a conduit for a discussion between them about their own unresolved issues. I consider it a great honor and privilege that in some small way, this book was able to serve them. This is the very reason I do what I do.
10. Was the process of writing the book difficult?
Yes and no. The overall process of writing a book is one of the most difficult things I have ever done. What to write? Why to write it? How to write it? Where to write? The time, energy, and effort are unlike any other thing I had ever done. And when you think you are finished, you find out you are not. It seems to go on forever and forever. After a certain point you can't even tell what is good and what isn't.
However, there is something about it when it is working right, when you are feeling the flow of it all that it becomes almost effortless, and sometimes seems to write itself. I have often looked back at what I have written, after one of those moments where it just seemed to flow out of me, and wondered, "Did I write that? It's not bad." Then to have someone find meaning in it or that it blessed them in some way is, well, it is just the best feeling in the world.
11. Do you hope to make the book into a movie?
I wrote the movie of this journey before I ever wrote the book. I am a visual person and I could see scenes in my head. I really had no idea what I was doing as a writer and I thought for some reason that writing a movie would be easier than writing a book (for the record, neither one is easy). I worked very hard at my plans to make this happen, and eventually came to understand that my plans were not the plan, and eventually I surrendered this outcome to God. I am sure He will let me know if He wants me to do more on this any time soon.
12. Do you plan to write another book?
I am working on that right now. I have several more books in me, and I can tell one of them is trying to get out! I have been praying, thinking, asking questions, and writing to see where I am being led on this.
13. You speak to different groups across the country. What is your message and what do you hope to accomplish?
I have spoken to just about every kind of group you can think of: business, church, hospitals, schools, publically traded companies and private ones - even a car dealership!
I will go anywhere, anytime, to see any amount of people to share this story. I do it because I see people connecting to this story. Somehow, people are seeing their own stories in the midst of the fishermen and my story, and they are finding hope in the truth of who they are and like me, they have become the fourth fisherman.