Not to be all Buzzfeed-clickbait about it but this is just about the most inspiring thing Ive ever read so I always post it on the anniversary of when it happened in 1972, and its worth reading with the anniversary of the events of 12/14/12 in mind. In October a plane carrying a young soccer team had crashed high in the snow-covered Andes in Chile, stranding about two dozen survivors and eventually leaving them nothing to eat but the bodies of their deceased friends. By December with hope of rescue gone Nando Parrado and two companions became desperate enough to try to hike their way out of the mountains. After two days of climbing they believed they were finally on the verge of finding a way out but when they reached what they thought was their last summit, they saw only more huge mountains stretching to the horizon. Finally convinced they now faced certain death, Nando writes in his book Miracle In The Andes: I don’t know how long I stood there, staring. A minute. Maybe two. I stood motionless until I felt a burning pressure in my lungs, and I realized I had forgotten to breathe. I sucked air. My legs went rubbery and I fell to the ground. I cursed God and raged at the mountains. The truth was before me: for all my striving, all my hopes, all my promises to myself and my father, it would end like this. We would all die in these mountains. We would sink beneath the snow, the ancient silence would fall over us, and our loved ones would never know how hard we had struggled to return to them. In that moment all my dreams, assumptions, and expectations of life evaporated into the thin Andean air. I had always thought that life was the actual thing, the natural thing, and that death was simply the end of living. Now, in this lifeless place, I saw with a terrible clarity that death was the constant, death was the base, and life was only a short, fragile dream. I was dead already. I had been born dead, and what I thought was my life was just a game death let me play as it waited to take me. In my despair, I felt a sharp and sudden longing for the softness of my mother and my sister, and the warm, strong embrace of my father. My love for my father swelled in my heart, and I realized that, despite the hopelessness of my situation, the memory of him filled me with joy. It staggered me: The mountains, for all their power, were not stronger than my attachment to my father. They could not crush my ability to love. I felt a moment of calmness and clarity, and in that clarity of mind I discovered a simple, astounding secret: Death has an opposite, but the opposite is not mere living. It is not courage or faith or human will. The opposite of death is love. How had I missed that? How does anyone miss that? Love is our only weapon. Only love can turn mere life into a miracle, and draw precious meaning from suffering and fear. For a brief, magical moment, all my fears lifted, and I knew that I would not let death control me. I would walk through the god-forsaken country that separated me from my home with love and hope in my heart. I would walk until I had walked all the life out of me, and when I fell I would die that much closer to my father. These thoughts strengthened me, and with renewed hope I began to search for pathways through the mountains.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 03:37:49 +0000
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