Survivor Antipodes 2008

Survival is an interesting modus operandi. It’s odd really because at the heart of a situation is a softness that can somehow gets lost in the translation. I often wonder what it is that enables us to survive situations and experiences. And I am constantly amazed at the human capacity for resilience in times such as those.

I wonder how people survive the things that they do and why exactly this one or that one fares better or not so well moreso than the other. Can we attribute it to past experiences or childhood modelling? Maybe. I think sometimes it has not so much to do with situations as it has to do with what’s at the core of the person. The stuff they’re made of.

And the thing about a thought like that is that we can’t truly know sometimes what we are made of until and unless we are in the moment. The past is a rear-vision mirror while the future is a looking glass and neither can enable a person to know exactly the response they will make to a situation at the time. Or so I think.

Survival can sometimes feel like this necessary state of being particularly when we are faced with trauma, a life-threatening situation or a fork in the road. We use it to spur us on and through some of life’s less pleasant upheavals. Its significance is grossly underestimated I think, down-played and subdued. We are less honouring of its place in the overall picture of our well-being.

Survival is like leaving soft imprints in the snow, we can see we we’ve been but the path ahead of us is untouched, pristine even and making our mark will not be as hard as we might think.