Live your life: Because survival is not enough

Observer

19-07-2025

Survival is defined as the state or fact of continuing to live or exist, typically in spite of ordeal or difficulty and its nature being directly proportional to its intensity and its possible consequences.
For example, you will see many young people in European society wearing t-shirts emblazoned with 'I survived 7 nights in Ibiza', which can be seen as a joke, droll, whimsical, or even sarcastic, depending upon your knowledge and understanding of Ibiza and its reputation. But it beggars no comparison whatsoever to the anguish of surviving a car crash, a shark attack, an earthquake, or a battle. While at one end of the scale an extended hangover is as bad as it gets, the others are truly traumatic events, in which to not survive is to perish.
German-born philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who himself lived a 'challenging' life. His father, a pastor, died of excruciating pain from a diseased brain, when the boy was only four and his younger brother also died only six months later, only two years old. Nietzsche was plagued by eyesight difficulties, migraines, debilitating indigestion, respiratory difficulties and significant mental issues; and by his mid-twenties was an invalid. Yet his philosophies and observations demonstrate remarkable clarity and he wrote that, 'To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering'. In doing so, he warned us that difficulties, suffering and survival are all part of life and as such must be faced with purpose.
Dave Pelzer, author of 'A boy Called 'It', about his experiences as a mistreated child, writes: 'You can be a victim or a survivor. It's a mindset'. In doing so, he virtually rationalises the stabbings, burnings, beatings and abuse by his alcoholic mother, any one of which would draw bitterness and vitriol from anyone, yet, even in the face of his father's passivity, Pelzer found a perspective that allowed him to focus on his way forward, his way out, of such callous brutality. He did survive! I guess, when confronted by situations that can be harmful, or even hurtful, you don't always, but sometimes you must make a choice.
To confront the 'challenge', mitigate its effects, fight like a tiger, or surrender? We just don't know, do we? But our responses will be, to a certain extent, be coloured by our previous experiences and our own homespun philosophies like 'not being bitten by the same dog twice', or 'living to fight another day'. Reassuringly, the great tactician and militarist Sun Tzu, once wrote that mankind, confronted with annihilation, will survive; plunged into deadly situations, they will live; and that when we are most exposed to danger, most of us will survive.
Another factor in survival is survivor's guilt, the response to events that we experience when we survive what others did not. This phenomenon is identified as a post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, a common anxiety disorder and an observable manifestation of tension and distress that sympathy cannot erode. It often manifests itself in solitude and a lack of communication and interaction, so has proven difficult to treat.
The North Sea Piper Alpha oil rig disaster saw 167 die and 61 survive; and Professor David Alexander of the Aberdeen Centre for Trauma Research, interviewed 36 of those survivors and found to his horror that, scarred as they were, mentally, many had difficulty finding employment following the disaster, as some offshore employers regarded them as "Jonahs — bringers of bad luck, who would not be welcome on other rigs and platforms'.
Imagine, even trying to reconcile your experiences, to be bludgeoned with such medieval thinking. It's almost beyond comprehension... almost. Yet, Alexander also stated that some are stronger than before the tragedy. 'They've learned things about themselves, their values and many relationships are now stronger as they find strengths they didn't know they had and heroism'. We have been told that for civilisation to survive, we must cultivate relationships, the ability of all people to live together, at peace. However, in our imperfect world there are always those who will be covetous enough to prefer instability within relationships, societies, cultures and faiths. For that shallow few, survival is naught but a clarion call to greed.