191 words, but perhaps only seven will do. “Cover the world, before it covers you.” That is the ethos buried underneath the varnish of Tom Mason. “One of my biggest frustrations is that life is so short and the world is so big,” he says. The CEO of Pharo Foundation is a man who lives foot down on the open road, with a parched spirit that nothing seems to quench. Not trailing across Namibia’s Skeleton Coast on horseback. Not riding from South Africa to Kenya, the wind in his hair, the world on his face, high speed, to the jazz pulse, the fizz. Not even sailing across the Atlantic from Cape Town to Brazil. No, not even that.
The life he chose is expansive, if not expensive. The fault in his stars? His pessimistic worldview. “I can easily find fault in anything.” Mild bouts of imposter syndrome. Cured by the next adventure. He’s slowed, but he hasn’t stopped. How could he? Each time, his desire had been satisfied, yet it remained undiminished, unsatisfied. He is a ceaseless romantic, in love with adventure, always in the distance, him always chasing it.