What do you think it means to survive? Have you ever thought what it would take? Does it have to do more with skill, luck, divine intervention, or all of the above?
What most of us don’t realize is that survival isn’t just zombie apocalypses and running out of burning buildings. Survival situations can look like “ordinary” events—a bad diagnosis, the passing of a loved one—that change your life forever.
Centuries of literature and popular folklore are littered with stories of unlucky polar explorers, downed pilots, and stranded mountaineers. Everyone has a personal favorite story of epic survival, whether it’s a shipwrecked castaway or pirate hostage.
Each of these stories celebrates the survivor at the heart of the narrative—and rightly so. These men and women are examples of humans overcoming immense adversity. But if you limit your focus to individual “extreme” stories of survival, you start to develop strange ideas about what it means to be a survivor. You get the impression that such survivors are superhumans forging unique paths to survival, that each scenario took a specific kind of thinking and skillset. You start to think the word “survivor” applies only to people who have lived through a plane crash or a hostage situation.
The problem with equating extreme survivors with superheroes is that we take away our ability to learn from the survival stories.
Survival in the context of this book includes the most trite of daily difficulties, the most infinitesimal of obstacles.
In other words, you are responsible for your survival. You will create your escape plan. You must act on that plan and have confidence in that plan. And you need to find ways to stay hopeful.