Do You Have the Impulse to Survive?
December 16, 2014
In 2003, Laurence Gonzales wrote “Deep Survival”. This is perhaps the finest book on survival I’ve ever read, certainly the most compulsive and insightful. Gonzales wrote, “Those who can control the impulse to survive, live. Those who can’t, die. That’s the simplest way to explain survival”.
In our first blog on this series, I wrote of pain as being a great teacher. Albeit a most unappealing one. When we humans find ourselves in deep trouble, we feel the icy fingers of fear and pain. Our natural impulse is to follow our panicked emotions. Nothing could be more dangerous to our survival!
We have all felt the jolt in our heart at sudden fear. That jolt is caused by the chemical nor-epinephrine which is produced in our adrenal glands. The chemicals that pour suddenly into our system at an emergency moment increase our heart beat and respiration. They divert blood from the stomach and make it available for muscles to run or fight. Our vision becomes more tunnel-like and our senses are keenly focused often to the detriment of other important factors that could help us.
Being able to engage the reasoning intelligent mind while being flooded with the adrenal cocktail is one of the essential factors in survival.
We all know from history of the numerous wealthy bankers and businessmen who jumped out of tall buildings when the 1929 stock market crash wiped out their wealth. Their emotions shut down their impartial reasoning and all they felt was panic, humiliation, and shame. Others, who felt all of those same emotions and who lost just as much, recovered, started over, and rebuilt their fortunes.
But telling people, “Don’t Panic!” is like trying to saddle an angry rhinoceros. One learns over the course of life how not to panic. In truth, you bring to every crisis the person you have been preparing throughout your lifetime. You won’t “not panic” if you have not been training for that moment via all the other “emergencies” of life.
One person’s marriage ends with the terrible clash of words and emotional bombs. Anothers ends by a vacant house with a note taped to the refrigerator. However it ends, the loss can become crippling, causing one to seek refuge in self-pity, drugs, alcohol or worse. The other understands that marriages- even good ones- often have life spans, similar to giant trees in the forest – eventually all die and fall. The person feels all of the same emotions of loss, regret, humiliation, and rejection; yet, that person moves forward where life and living are, not trying to re-grow a fallen oak, but by planting a new one and reforesting his life again.
Do you have the heart to survive? Is it in your heart to want to get back up when you’ve already been knocked down seventeen times? Remember, failure is only failure when you stop getting back up. Otherwise, it is simply learning more for a better future!
