Eyecandy Monday

I saw 127 Hours yesterday...

In  2003 Aron Ralston went hiking down a canyon in the Utah desert. He failed to let anyone know where he was going, and didn't carry a phone. A rockfall trapped his right arm. After 5 days struggling to free himself - out of water, and knowing that he was dying - he cut his arm off using a blunt penknife (it took over an hour) and hiked 8 miles to find help.

It's hard to imagine being that resourceful, that courageous, that much in command of oneself. We live in a victim culture, where we always want someone else to take responsibility when shit happens. Would I have the balls to do that, I ask myself? I doubt it.

Nowadays, with the help of prosthetics, Ralston still climbs and goes canyoning - and he's married with a kid. He wrote all about his experience in a book called Between a Rock and a Hard Place, and it's been made into a film called 127 Hours by Danny Boyle. He regards his ordeal as something so positive in its effect upon his life that, given the choice of going back in time and not making the same mistakes, he says he'd do it all again. It has given him perspective on himself and his life. He lost a bit of himself, and found the whole.

He says he learned that "our purpose as spiritual beings is to follow our bliss, seek our passions, and live our lives as inspirations to each other." And that "On the poster for the film it says there is no force on earth more powerful than the will to live. I say – except for the will to love. And that's really what got me out of there."

(Interview with Aron Ralston about the film.)