How often do we really experience every moment, to live and die every day?
“Once more into the fray,
into the greatest fight I’ll ever know.
Live and die on this day”
Ian Mackenzie Jeffers; Ghost Walker
Based on a short story by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers and produced into a movie called The Grey with Liam Neeson. The film is a seemingly predictable, although enjoyable, survival movie. A plane crashes in an arctic wonderland with only seven survivors, eventually becoming one, as they are picked off one by one by a pack of wolves. But at the very end of the movie the film’s mantra is repeated – live and die on this day – the suspense had me at the edge of my seat as the fate of both predators; the wolf and Liam Neeson is left hanging. Liam Neeson chose to fight to the end, for his end to be one last good fight and it seemed the alpha wolf had decided the same thing.
Are you a survivor? Would you fight to the very end? How do any of us know how we will react until we are in that type of situation. But what I want to know is…can you survive your life? I am not talking about survival skills or a will to survive against all adversity. I am talking about the will to survive the mundane! The nine to five job, the two to four kids, the endless bills.
Is it a coincidence that the spelling of ‘fray’ means a fight or conflict and also to become worn or frayed. Sometimes I think just coping with the mundane parts of life are a far bigger challenge than the days when I was traveling. Every day is different when you are backpacking; every moment you are able to have new experiences and meet new people. There is a freedom in not paying bills, in moving when and where you feel like it. Like the brave men that returned from the war, once you have been traveling it is no longer so easy to live a normal life.
Do you have the energy to survive…to work just to exist and exist to work…to survive this life?
Well, do you?…