Desperate Days:
I watched the Tom Brokaw special on that guy whose hand got caught by a boulder while hiking last year and had to amputate his own arm to survive. I remember that was a pretty unbelievable news item. How psychologically traumatic is that to cut off your own arm? What does it take to envision and execute that kind of separation between the self and a part of the self? In the special, he goes back to where it all happened and basically relives it day by day for Brokaw. I admit it, I get emotional about any aspect of the human experience. I'll get teary over chocolate ice cream if you can relate it to the uniqueness of the human experience. Existence itself, to me, seems such a miracle, a second of which is taken for granted is a shame.

What Aron Ralston went through and did was way out on the fringe of human experience. Even watching him describe what he went through in moment to moment detail, it's impossible to know what he went through. Like it's impossible to empathize what a holocaust victim or survivor went through. Like it's impossible to artificially recreate what it feels like when you hear that someone you know has died. There are extreme human experiences that people get placed in and have to chute through. Aron Ralston wasn't just placed in a situation, but he had to proactively act within it and cut his own arm off!

The elements in his story are just mind-boggling. It was so random, fate so fickle. I kick myself for something as small as losing my keys. Just as small is the decision to go hiking, to go climbing on rocks. What if losing my keys led to agonizing for days whether to cut off my arm with a dull knife, necessitating breaking both wrist bones, or not? It's unthinkable. I lose my keys, I'll look for them, eventually I'll find them, or I won't and I'll replace them. Even when I go out on my bike, I'm constantly hyper-aware of the possibility of getting hit by a car. How about go out on my bike and ending up having to decide to cut my arm off?

I would have taken the easy way out and died in his situation, and missed out on the experience of a lifetime. He said something about rather losing his arm and surviving than not having that experience at all. He's right.