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A better understanding of oneself mobilises inner resources which in turn leads to better stress management and more creativity, scientist and adventurer Dr Bertrand Piccard tells Tridwip K Das

Dr Bertrand Piccard does too many things. Most, so successfully that he ends up creating world records. Like when he went around the world in a balloon – one long balloon ride in 19 days, 21 hours and 47 minutes over 45,755km. Sipping fresh orange juice in the lobby of Al Bandar at the Shangri-La’s Barr al Jissah Resort and Spa, he sounds like he regrets it. “I wish we could have been longer up there. It’s so beautiful in the sky.” With that fantastic flight, Piccard set seven records.

But it’s not just for the sake of chasing records that Piccard does these crazy things. It’s to prove human endurance and to highlight the urgent need for conservation. He’s now planning an around-the-world non-stop solar powered flight, scheduled for next year, in a project called Solar Impulse. It does, in fact, sound like an impulsive idea at this stage. But considering the 50 year old Swiss’ past records, and his father and grandfather’s too, you can safely put your money on his next adventure. “It’ll be a 36-hour flight. Take off in the morning, when we can charge the solar batteries in flight; fly through the night with the charged batteries and continue flying the next day,” he informs. He expects the airplane, with a 61m wingspan, to use the same amount of energy used to light up a Christmas tree.

As he talks animatedly about using the renewable natural resources available to mankind, he walks quickly over to a window in the Al Bandar lobby to check its insulation. Satisfied, he settles down to continue. “All your expensive and elaborate air conditioning fails if you don’t use adequately insulated glass on your windows. That is such a waste of energy.” From the issue of energy wastage to climate change, Piccard moves seamlessly. “In our world, the fight against climate change is presented as something that threatens our lifestyle, something that will reduce our mobility, something that is expensive and boring. We make it appear like a sacrifice we will have to make. But it’s just the opposite. “For air transport, the International Air Transport Association ( IATA) has set the goal of zero pollution emission by 2050, which is going to stimulate new kind of construction of airplanes. The European community has set very high targets for pollution emission of cars and now you have the German manufacturers screaming. They say it’s impossible to achieve those targets. But we already have a hybrid car because someone had the sense of what was going to happen. They had the sense of anticipation, which the German car industry did not have. Here you see the new trends for the industry, and the people who are going to understand that are those who are going to be successful. The new profits will be made in that field. These are the new products to sell, new areas to work…” he says, excited at the prospects.

In Muscat on invitation of HSBC, besides being a UNFPA goodwill ambassador, co-founder of the Winds of Hope Foundation that supports associations fighting against noma in children across poor Asian, African and South American states, pioneer of microlight flying and European champion of hang glider aerobatics, Piccard is also much sought after in the motivational speakers’ circuit for his insight of the human mind. A medical doctor who specialised in psychiatry and psychotherapy, Piccard loves to explore life and people. “As a medical doctor, I want to improve the quality of life; and psychiatry and psychotherapy help me better understand human behaviour,” he says. “Most people don’t know who they are and how they behave. If you don’t know yourself, how can you know someone else? Human beings are not only about what they do but what they are. Unfortunately we live in a society where we deal too much with what we do and not enough with what we are. That’s why we greet each other asking ‘How do you do?’” And that is not a happy situation, he believes. Piccard recommends any practice – “Meditation, Tai Chi, psychoanalysis… whatever, to help you know yourself a little better.” Once that is achieved, he believes you can mobilise your inner resources to concentrate, relax and deal with emotions, which in turn leads to better stress management, communication and more creativity. It is this basic understanding of the human mind that has fuelled his work into the emergence of different levels of awareness in extreme situations. “It’s in a moment of crisis that your creativity can be useful,” he observed. “But we like to do only what we are comfortable doing. We seek certainty; to be in control, which is dangerous because the known and the familiar prevent creativity. We sleep in certainties; but if we wake up from the ordinary, then there’s a possibility of discovering and exploring new things. It is the unknown that stimulates creativity. We must wake up every morning and ask ourselves, ‘What can I do to change for the better, to improve, make today better and more interesting than yesterday?’ That’s where the adventure starts.”

While on adventures, it started with his grandfather. Auguste (1884-1982) built the first bathyscaphe, explored the stratosphere at 16,000m and was the first man to see the curvature of the earth’s surface with his own eyes. The inspiration behind Prof Cuthbert Calculus in Tintin comics – “Calculus is a reduced scale Piccard, the real chap was very tall,” Herge confirmed in an interview in 1948 – the senior Piccard was a contemporary of Albert Einstein and Marie Curie. Continuing the quest to explore and invent, his son Jacques dived to the deepest known earth’s depth – the Mariana Trench, 10,916m, – and invented the submersible mesoscaphe, besides building the world’s first submarine for tourists. And then came Bertrand in a balloon, which for him symbolises the new relationship between man, technology and nature. “In this metaphor of life, the balloon is a captive of the winds that propel it, just as man is a prisoner of his certitudes, his problems or his destiny. And just as the balloon can change altitude to find currents which will change its direction, the human being can rise up psychologically or spiritually to reassume responsibility for the direction of his existence.” Piccard has obviously found the wind beneath his wings and soared high. Now he talks others into finding theirs. And continue the adventure called life.