Endurance
By Jessica Lake
“How did you do it?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “How did I do what?”
The studio lights clearly bothered her.
“Survive. How did you survive when everyone else collapsed? What’s so special about you?”
“Survive?” She looked puzzled. “How could anyone hope to survive? Survival was impossible.”
“Well then what the hell did you do? Why did you reach civilization when the others did not?”
The interviewer shifted in his chair. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was fishing for. She had only just returned to the real world. It seemed almost cruel to question her so soon. But beneath his curiosity was something earnest. He needed to understand.
And in some small way, she respected that.
“Endurance,” she said.
“Endurance?” he replied, skeptical. “Like a man running a marathon? One foot in front of the other? I’ve done that before.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head softly. “Not that kind of endurance.”
She looked down, gathering her thoughts.
“I’m talking about the endurance at the lowest stratum of life. The one thing shared by every living thing. The simplest command.”
“To endure.”
The interviewer wondered if it was too soon. Perhaps she had not recovered enough to explain things clearly. Her answers sounded off—almost nonsensical.
“Perhaps,” he said carefully, “you could put it another way.”
She nodded.
“Imagine this. Your turbofan plane, way off course, goes down in snowy mountains. Forty-seven make it out of the crash—men, women, children. We decide, en masse, that the only way to avoid certain death is to reach civilization by descending the mountain.”
“At first, it’s just a plan. We were resolute.”
Her mind lingered on the word.
“But as the days and nights passed, others surrendered. People started to die. Resolution gave way.”
She offered a small, almost wry smile.
“Then it became about survival. That simple thought: I don’t want to die.”
She paused, then shook her head.
“But even that fades in time.”
“Death begins to look sweet. Like a lover. A fitting end to a well-lived life. A rest at the end of the day.”
The interviewer listened carefully.
“But a few of us,” she said quietly, “a select few… were too stupid to accept any of that.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Too stupid? Are you saying it was stupidity that allowed you to survive?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “Yes, it was.”
“How could it not be stupid? When everything points to hopelessness? When the end is obvious to anyone with sense?”
“And yet something in you rejects it.”
She lifted her head.
“That is what I mean by life. Life will not accept an end. Life insists on living.”
“Even when living means only one thing.”
“To endure.”
“To place one foot in front of the other. Again, and again.”
“That inconsequential stupidity, multiplied across time… becomes survival.”
The interviewer nodded slowly.
“I think I understand what you’re saying.”
“No,” she said gently. “You don’t.”
“It takes a special person, a special situation, and a special kind of honesty to see it within yourself.”
“Beyond strength.”
“Beyond reason.”
“Beyond everything we like to think of as human.”
She paused.
“And then it reaches out to you—the simple imperative to live.”
Silence settled over the audience.
The interviewer leaned forward.
“But nothing comes from nothing,” he said. “As the song goes. Where do you think your strength came from?”
“Strength?” she said with a faint smile. “That’s a funny word. By the tenth day, we were well past strength.”
He waited.
“What guided me,” she said slowly, “was the same thing that guided me when I was a girl.”
He frowned slightly.
“When I was in the orphanage.” She looked away.
“And no one ever came?”
The audience was completely still.
“No one,” she said. “I was not saved.”
The interviewer sat back. There was truth in what she had said—he could feel it—but it lay beyond his grasp.
Finally, he turned toward the audience.
“Well,” he said quietly, “there you have it, ladies and gentlemen.”
He stood and began to clap slowly.
Soon, everyone was on their feet.
“That,” he said, “is how this brave woman survived… when the others did not.”