the human spirit

I am so inspired by incredible stories of survival by people who refuse to give up. I am completely hooked on the following shows:

I Survived
I'm Alive
I Shouldn't Be Alive

Sensing a pattern? I probably shouldn't watch these shows because it makes me [more] paranoid about life, but they are all so inspiring. The human will to live is amazing and I always end up wondering what I would do in those horrifying situations that people live through.

Tonight I watched a two hour documentary about the 1972 Uruguayan plane that crashed in the Andes. The flight started out with 45 people aboard and there were 16 men that survived the ordeal. Do you know how long they were stranded in the freezing mountains? 72 days. SEVENTY-TWO days. That is absolutely incredible. To hear about everything they went through for 2.5 months was awful. But then to hear that 16 of them survived all of those awful days is so, so amazing.

Two men actually trekked almost 40 miles through the snowy mountains (with barely any food, water, no equipment and no idea of where they were), looking for rescue. When they finally stumbled upon a river, I can't even imagine how happy they must have felt. One of the survivors spoke of the overwhelming sense of relief to sense that life was near. First they found the river, and then a patch of grass with some flowers. This man made the comment that in these moments, you realize that we don't need everything we have, that life is much simpler than it looks. What a profound statement, and so true.

We don't need iPhones or BMW's or Mac's or flat-screen TV's. These gadgets and materialistic things that make our lives comfortable and fancy somehow become twisted into ideas of things that we think we need.

When it comes down to it, love is the most important thing. Relationships are what matters and are what remain when we have nothing left. So let's love more! Let's want less.