After watching Society of the Snow, which tells the story of the survivors of a plane crash in the Andes in 1972, I started avidly reading their memoirs and listening to their interviews.
For those unfamiliar with it, the quick summary is that after the plane crashed, the Government sent rescue but couldn't find them. Abandoned in the harshest environment imaginable, they had to eat the bodies of the deceased to survive. Eventually, after two months, two of them hiked for 10 days straight back to civilization and found help.
Here are some lessons I've learned from the survivors.
Most people never experienced hunger. Hunger is the oldest human fear. It's not just about not eating, but also not knowing if and when you're going to eat next. The worst experience of hunger is when the body is so starved that it starts to consume itself. And when that happens, you think very differently.
When life pushes you in the darkest corner, you double down on courage. Nando Parrado, one of the two hikers who crossed the Andes and found help, was later called a hero and praised for his courage. But he clarified that he wasn't brave. He was simply terrified — of passively waiting to die ("I'd rather die walking than sitting down") and, more deeply, that there would come a day in which they'd need to consume the remains of his mother and sister who died in the crash ("I'd rather be dead on a glacier by then.") In the face of fear, he doubled down on courage.
Death is ordinary, life is extraordinary. After being in a coma for 3 days and nearly freezing at night on the trek, Parrado crossed several of what he calls the "invisible doors of death." And he learned on a visceral level that life is the 'anomaly', while death is the predominant state of the Universe.
"We think we're going to live forever, that life is this eternal thing… but when death grabs you so close, so many times, you realize that death is the eternal thing, not life. Life lasts a split second, death is forever."
'God' helps those who help themselves. Roberto Canessa, the other hiker, had a great quote about this in his memoir.
"On this sixth day hiking across the mountains, I learned that when you're tiptoeing the line between life and death, you don't despair. You either live or die; you quit or you fight on. When you decide you won't resign yourself to dying, you find a strength you never knew you had, and you push beyond the limits of what you thought was possible. […] Something came alive inside me, something that went beyond will. There were times when I felt as if I couldn't go any farther, and yet, somehow, my legs kept moving."
