This is the second installation of the article I started posting last week.
We often hear about the will to live, but are given no benchmark to quantify it, or to understand if we ‘have it’ or not. Please leave any comments or questions.
Will to Survive
As an organism the human body wants to survive and will do what is necessary within its power to do so. A drowning person will focus on keeping their mouth and nose above the water to catch a breath, and will expend large amounts of energy to accomplish this. They’ll do this to the exclusion of making any cries for help,a s the simply don’t have the air to waste. They appear to be trying to crawl out of the water. This ‘drowning behavior’, or struggle to stay afloat is a gross expenditure of energy and depending on water temperature and surface conditions as well as the persons’ physical condition, the drowning person will tire and sink. As a Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer, I’ve approached distressed people in the water that would have gladly used my head as a step-ladder to get into the helicopter rescue basket that dangled by a cable from the helicopter. They were probably glad to see me, but had little concern for my welfare outside of my ability to get them out of the water. Getting out and staying out of the water was their only priority.
So what separates the business-as-usual process of getting from the start of our day through to the end, making minor adjustments as we go, from a scenario where we are at risk of injury or death unless we respond to save our own lives? What may constitute an emergency for me may barely raise a blip on your emergency radar, and visa versa.
In April, 2003 Aron Ralston, an experienced high altitude climber and skier became pinned by an 800-pound boulder that fell onto his right arm while he was climbing down Bluejohn Canyon in Utah. After 6 days of struggling to get free, he cut off his own hand above the wrist using the dulled blade of a cheap aftermarket multi-purpose tool. He leveraged against the pinning boulder to break the radius and ulna bones in his lower arm. After freeing himself he hiked/climbed out, and was rescued at the mouth of the canyon that day. Many people who read this story and some who commented on it publicly asked the same question, either to themselves or privately: What would I have done? Could I have done that?
We do what we know how to do. We do what we always do.
When asked how he managed to severe his own hand, Aron Ralston said that he “entered a flow state”; that he wasn’t thinking of the future, just of what was in front of him at the moment. It was interesting to read that he had ‘been there before’ many times (referring to the ‘flow state’) while climbing.-This ‘flow state’ he described is a coping mechanism he uses in stressful or concentration-intense situations. The good news is that you don’t need to be a climber or an explorer to use this tool. We all have it, it’s an involuntary mechanism that the organism, you and I, use to focus on what is most important at that time, in that moment. It’s how your mind boils down all the input it is receiving, enabling us to bring our abilities to bear on solving the core problem or what we perceive is the core problem. The difference between Aron Ralston or other experience-intense individuals, and other people, who aren’t quite so high speed, is that Mr. Ralston has been actively developing this coping mechanism over time. He has been building a mental library of similarly stressful experiences to draw from, memories that will influence the organism’s behavior. Feelings tied to actions that have had a positive outcome in that type of situation.
Aron Ralston had never amputated a limb before, or performed any other types of surgery for that matter. But his experiences with high stress events enabled him to manage this event, take it and dissect it, and deploy a mindset that looks at what is taking place now and compares it to events in the past. Does this look familiar? Does this feel familiar? How did I cope with this feeling before? And keep in mind that by the sixth day of his ordeal he was dehydrated, hypothermic, sleep and nutrition deprived. He was coping with several facets of strain and distraction. But he had reached a point where he knew that in order to survive, he was going to have to remove himself from that which was holding him under the boulder in that canyon. He knew he couldn’t move the boulder. He had tried that part of the puzzle and couldn’t make that part fit. He analyzed what he needed to do to escape and live, he planned each step and he executed his plan. If you read his story about this, his clarity at that point is unnerving. But he had used this process before. Evaluate, refer, plan, execute. Rinse, repeat.
Back to Julian McCormick and Tillie Tooter, whom we had left hanging inverted by their seat belts. When they realized they could not extricate themselves, they evaluated their surroundings and started to tend to their immediate needs such as thirst, hunger, and their injuries. Julian drank stream water, and ate a fish he had caught, raw. Tillie used the steering wheel cover to divert rainwater to where she was so she could drink. She inventoried her food, which consisted of a cough drop, some gum, and a peppermint candy. Julian, like Aron realized that he was going to have to take responsibility for his own rescue in spite of his injuries. Tillie Tooter realized that in her predicament, she would be unable to get back up to the road unassisted. So she drew on her experiences of having to be patient. She prayed, putting her faith in a system outside of her control to get her out of that car. And later in the ordeal she began to accept the possibility that she may not be rescued.
Next week I’ll discuss two common enemies of solid survival behavior.
(Previous entry in this series–(https://rickmcelrath.wordpress.com/2013/05/14/survival-behavior-why-we-do-what-we-do-when-life-gets-strange/)
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