He decided he wanted to go to Harvard University after a chance encounter with US draft dodgers in Canada and having seen the cover of an issue of Life magazine in 1969 that featured the famous Harvard strike. He picked anthropology as his major after a casual chat with an acquaintance who introduced the subject to him the day before registering. He chose to venture into the Amazon, having randomly pointed his finger at a world map hanging in a cafe.
For Wade Davis, the National Geographic Society's explorer-in-residence, who delivered a lecture at the University of Hong Kong this week, making one's own decisions and taking control of life is a recipe for sanity, even if that can involve an element of irrationality as you follow gut instincts.
The importance of being one's own master meant there wasn't one standard formula to success in life. 'When we tell our children, 'If you don't go from A to B to C then you're doomed', it's a lie. Life isn't linear,' said the Harvard-trained anthropologist and biologist.
'You come to some kind of opportunities and what you want to cultivate is the ability to look at the crossroads, not listen to your parents, family, peers or society.'
Dr Davis, 53, said that when you get to a certain point in life and look back you might realise you never really knew what you wanted to do. But that didn't necessarily matter.
'Because you always controlled those decisions, you owned them in life,' he said. 'Men have mid-life crises because they don't own their lives and suddenly feel life slipping away.'
