A Mysterious Story Introduced

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Thank you and we'll come back to another episode of Philosophy of Life Podcast. My name is Reza Sanjite. Today episode is a special one. This one is about something that happened in a way what cannot fully describe. When I come across it, I had to stop and listen to it. It has a power that moves you in a very fundamental way. We think as human that we know everything until a moment comes when we realize that we didn't know, not even the slightest idea. These extraordinary moments happen to us for some reason to me they are God's language. We think we all have similar experiences, but in reality we have an illusion of similarity. We see everything through our own eye, and that is what makes our experience unique to us. So today episode is one of those that takes you somewhere you have not experienced yet. A normal person just like anybody else in the world living a quiet life and suddenly everything is upside down. And then at that moment you pull yourself together and try to understand what is really happening. This is the life of truly extraordinary person and what happened to him changed him forever. Sean Free, our guest today, has deserved to admire not only for what he went through, which is admirable by itself, but for what he fought for. He came to understand that this life is not something he wants to leave behind. Because he had something worth fighting for. And he did, and he was absolutely right. I hope I didn't give too much away. Let's listen to Sean's story in his own voice. Before we dive into your experience, I would like to start a little earlier. Can you tell us about yourself, where are you coming from, your background, and what your life was like before everything changed?

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Oh yeah. Um so I um my early life. I grew up on a farm in eastern Oregon. Gave me some pretty good work ethic and good mechanical ability. My father was a mechanic. Later in life, that transitioned to um well about three years old. I got my first motorcycle. And that's from that time on, that's always been kind of my zen space now. Place where I can get into my flow state pretty easy, just from muscle memory and just time in the saddle. Um later on in life, being more mechanically inclined, I ended up being an operations manager, things like that. And then due to work downturns, I got uh had to get out of the office, go back to work. You know, I was working on a propane truck. That's where my accident happened. I just life experience has got me the experience I need to work on those trucks. And at the same time, I was also becoming a motorcycle instructor, and that's after my injury, I've pretty much all rebuilt my life to get back to those two communities of motorcycling and burned survivors.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

So, how old were you when the accident happened?

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Uh, I was 40. I had just turned 40.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Just from 40. So before 40, what would what would your life experience was like?

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Uh pretty standard. Uh married. I'd been married to my wife for quite we got married in 2001. So we'd I've been married for 17 years. I had a my son was just turning eight, and my daughter was gonna turn, oh geez, I gotta do math, uh, about 14, 15 years old. Wow. So normal family guy just working and trying to do as much as he can with his kids and be a good husband, all the fun stuff. The typical American dream.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

And 40 that accident happened.

Explosion, Fire, And Rural Rescue

SPEAKER_00 5:07

Yep. Yeah, uh, March 13th, uh, 2018. I was uh at that time, I was a traveling propane technician through the Northwest. So I was working for a company and then they would as a contractor for a lot of other companies, places like Amerigas, other propane distributors. I would help them maintain their equipment and then get it certified for state inspections. I would do all the inspections for federal and state and then calibrate those machines to make sure customers got the right amount of product that they paid for. Um and then uh uh that day, 2000 or March 13th, I was working on a truck. It was had a mechanical malfunction. The big internal three-inch valve that they have malfunctioned while I was trying to evacuate a section of the system. And because of that malfunction, it dumped about 300 liquid gallons of propane out into the atmosphere, which propane um expands a lot. It's I think it's one of the most the chemical expansive most between liquid and uh gas. I can't remember the all the specifics now, but uh it was a just about a knee-high cloud of gas laying on the ground because of how cold it was. Uh propane was heavy, so it was laying on the ground. As I crawled underneath that truck to shut that system down, something ignited and lit that whole pool of gas I was laying in on fire. Heard a big backdraft, and uh flame just wrapped around the pump I was sitting at and slammed me in the face. Uh, when that happened, I turned over, covered my head with my work gloves, and I kind of just waited for the everything to settle. There was a pretty big explosion. Um I think uh looking on the Montana College up there, the university, they have a seismograph and it registered an earthquake like four miles away when the explosion happened. I was uh once everything settled, I crawled out from beneath the truck. I looked up and realized that um I was still alive. So that was kind of a shocker for me. And uh I was burnt pretty bad. Uh, I could see skin hanging off my arm, and at that point I was pretty sure I was gonna look like Deadpool. Uh me and my friends had just watched that movie the weekend before, so that was fresh in my brain. I ran and uh put myself out in a snowbank and uh from there by standard. Uh sorry to mention this earlier. This is in rural Montana. There really wasn't a lot around me. Uh a woman driving by stopped her car, came out to grab me because I was next to this you know, 3,000-gallon propane truck that had a flame shooting out of the back, pointed right at my work truck, and then it's shooting flames out of the top. And she got me up. She tried to get me up. I wouldn't get up until I cooled down. I knew I had to get cooled off in the snow, just all my burns. When she walked over, I realized I'd only had like a loincloth of clothes left, one boot, as um, all my other clothes were melted off of me or onto me. At that point, I walked to the a pickup and then was driven to the side of the road where I talked to a sheriff. I took off my ring, my keys, or I had a my wallet, a pocket knife, and my ring. I took my ring off because I knew my hands were gonna swell, handed out to the sheriff and asked him to ship it to my wife. He looked pretty shocked, and I was like, I just my address is on the license there. So I uh gave him a statement. I walked to an ambulance. Um, they gave me some meds, strapped me down, and started holding me to the hospital in Montana. And from in Montana, the emergency room there. The doctor allowed me, he called my wife, and um, I talked to her on the phone. And when he hung up, he's like, We're gonna put you to sleep, you're gonna wake up in Seattle. So that's where they put me under, uh, blew me to Seattle, and then at that point, I just remember waking up and I was standing in a room and I was wearing a suit. I was in the tux. I stand next to my wife and I was trying to talk to her. She was just ignoring me, wouldn't interact with me at all. I was trying to figure it out, and I was like, well, I've been in combat sports and motorcross and all this stuff my whole life. I've taken hits with the head more than once and lost spans of time. So I just kind of figured my brain just erased everything that gap. I figured it'd come back and I still try to talk to my wife. And I just heard in my head, hey, everybody you love is behind those doors. All you gotta do is go go through those. I was like, well, we're gonna have a party. This is gonna be a good time. I was trying to get my wife, and she wasn't uh talking to her, she wouldn't interact with me, and I started getting upset, and it started dawning on me that it's none of it was really real. I could see the Seattle cityscape, but it just wasn't right. And uh I just started yelling, I'm not going anywhere, not going anywhere without her, not leaving. And um, that's when I really woke up in the hospital. I could see the gauze around my eyes, it was all, and that was about it. And I could see that my nose was charred, my lips were charred, everything was so swollen up, they're all in my field of view. My eyes were themselves were burnt. I couldn't see more than about seven feet. That had just turned into like a fog because they were just it's a layer over the top of your eyes, that part was burnt. I just heard a nurse start telling me, hey, your eyesight's gonna come back, don't worry. Then I tried to talk to my wife again, and I couldn't because I'd uh intubated, I'd been intubated, I had tubes in that surgery I was in prior to waking up. I had coded both lungs, had pneumonia in them, and my body just gave out. They brought me back in that surgery. That was kind of that was where my whole experience really started.

Hospital Transfer And Strange Awakening

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Wow. So the experience itself is a phenomenon. Um I what was what was your feeling after that moment that you wake up in a dream and you saw your life?

SPEAKER_00 12:14

Oh oh dang, it was it was real, you know, like it's oh it was a little overwhelming, but also pretty grateful at the same time, you know? Like you never know you're alive until after you just figured out you're not gonna die. Type deal. So you did it. It was pretty no, no, I'm not very good at giving up. I never have been.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

So what would uh after um all those experience, what would be the emotional impact on you?

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Um it was a lot. I mean, that's a whole lot process in that time, you know. Just uh it was pretty overwhelming because I wanted to talk, I wanted to, you know, communicate. But with the tubes in my mouth, I couldn't talk. My everything was so damaged, my hands were swollen. Um, I'd put on about 60 pounds of water weight. So it like every every task was very complicated at that point. So right at first is pretty overwhelming.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

What would what would you say what was the meaning of this episode? I know it was real, it was happening. You almost passed away, so you came back. What do you think was the meaning of it for you?

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Uh that's a great question. I've been trying to figure that out for about eight years now. Um, I don't know. I don't know why I came back. I just know I feel like I still have stuff to do, things I need to get done. So I'm just trying to do as much as I can to make a better try to leave the world in a better spot than I found it, is what I'm doing now.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

So what what has been changed since then in you? I mean, do you feel any changes? Obviously, you do.

Emotional Fallout And Fighting Spirit

SPEAKER_00 14:18

Yeah, a big one. Uh, and this is something I just kind of through all the stuff I've been reading and the books I've been used uh you know using for the last few years, a lot of stoicism. While I was in there, I was in wherever I was, I just remember this overwhelming sense of peace and calmness. And for the longest time, I always just thought that was society's judgment. It was gone. Um, it just took me till just recently I was doing something, my brain goes, No, that wasn't society, that was you. That was your judgment that disappeared. I was like, oh, that makes a lot more sense. You know, since I was out of my being or whatever, all my own judgments were then gone. So it's been pretty that's only happened the last month or so, and it's been pretty big change for me.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

So um what would you if if you look at back to yourself and the after that happening to you, obviously it was extremely uh difficult to go through this, all this happened, but but then again, I I would say something good come came out out of it. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 15:46

A lot of good came out of it. Um before the accident, I was um best way just like a lot of people, I jumped to conclusions a lot. I I was really loud in the world to affect me a lot more than I should, you know. And now I realize that it's just not it's none of it's really that important. The only thing that's really important is what you actually can manage and what you have control over. That was the biggest mind shift that I've had over the last eight years is just allowing the world to affect me a lot less and trying to get me to affect the world a lot more.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Exactly. Exactly right. So we we think we are in control, we are not. We only control in in what we do. Yeah, and that's where also is very limited, obviously.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

It's limited but very freeing at the same time. I mean anyway.

Meaning, Stoicism, And Control

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Um Sean, uh what would you recommend uh to Sean what is known today with all the experience you have it now? What would you ex basically uh suggest to Sean when he was 18 years old?

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Oh wow. Sean at 18 was feral. Uh it would have been a lot of just pay more attention, listen talk less, listen more. It'd be what my big deal was. Just that that's what would be the biggest help to me at that age. It's just the same follow start listening. I think Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is what been one of the big key things. It's helped me a lot. Just repeatedly reading that. Um, I would have g definitely gave myself that book. Helped a lot.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

So what would you tell the last thing to our audience that they can take it home and get the advice for life?

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Um great question. Um, the thing I've been really focusing on lately, um you go through something like this, you start diving into different religions and different just trying to figure out this puzzle I was given. All the religions I've bred up on, studied, I now think those are more for teaching a person how to manage themselves and not managing the world. I think that's where a lot of people get religion wrong. It it was never designed to manage everybody else in the world, it was only designed to manage you. I think that helps a lot. Helped me a lot getting in that mind frame.

Religion As Self-Management

The Host’s Burn Memory

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly right. So, Sean, thank you very much to be here. I really appreciate it. I I definitely recommend to all our audience listening to that part that you are explaining it so well. What happened to you and what it came out of it. I myself has been burned, but I was only six years old, but every single minute of it I remember it. Even though I was so young, I was so young. I remember that all my hout was basically coming out, scrolling all to my to my body, and I could see my stomach of my bread meat and everything else. I was um I was burned by hot water boiling water, and I was only like six years old, I was young. So that's experience. I I cried every single day. But then they tried to change my band and everything. I cried and I remember that. I remembered everything that I remember that my mom was crying every single time with me. So I I think you probably not gonna you're gonna remember that too, obviously, because oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

I mean when I was a child, I got burnt by my dad was making tea and dropped the deal and spilled boiling water on my side. I still remember that too. I was in middle school at the time, so yeah. Those memories stay. Pain stays, it's pretty it stays pretty well. Stay very well.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Again, thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Oh, thank you.

unknown 20:54

Thank you.

Final Reflections And Closing

SPEAKER_01 21:05

And perhaps what stays with us is not just Sean's story, but the question is quietly leave behind is what do we really know about life and what weights behind the ages of our understanding. Sometimes it takes a moment like this, unexpected, overwhelming, and impossible to explain, to remind us how little we truly see and how much there still to discover. If this episode gives you something to think about, something to question, or even something you cannot quite put them in words, then it has been done the work. Thank you for being here. This is Rosa Sanji Day. And that has been Another episode of Lout of Your Life. Until next time, keep questioning, keep reflecting, and stay open to the moment that may change everything for you.