How Survival Became Popular

I love the concept of survival as I've expressed through many blog postings. Survival speaks a lot about a person. You learn about yourself and what matters most to you when it seems in jeopardy. For many people, survival becomes an obsession like an extreme sport. I consider myself a survival addict, but in a different sense given the many fantastic situations and circumstances I get to survive.

Popular culture also loves survival which is ironic when we consider how attached we are to our posh lives. We have have Lost (ultimate survival, how tempting), Survival (try and...survive...basically) American Idol and the dance/talent/modeling shows (surviving the ridicule of other Americans), Gray's Anatomy and House (who's going to surviving being cut up?), Desperate Housewives (surviving marriage and other...things), Alias (spy survival) and finally CNN (can American conservatism survive liberal bias?). We like to survive, we have a history of surviving which we're proud of and we like to think we can, and so we try and watch others try.

Life overseas is survival of the fittest. Avoiding food poisoning is a glorious achievement in itself and avoiding other maladies such as malaria, Ebola and Japanese encephalitis is a bonus. To create contraption like clothes lines, fixing washing machines, or door stoppers with the bare necessities such as bricks, duct tape and clothes hangers, proves you have outsmarted the elements and you have the self-satisfaction of doing it yourself. You can be as brilliant as Christopher Columbus was in his American discovery of 1492.

It's not really just survival, it's the willingness to adapt. Life is about adapting to changes; from childhood to high school, from high school to uni, from uni to job, from two door truck to the mini van, from house to house and city to city, change to change. It's about having a good attitude about change, accepting the changes for what they are and deciding to have a good time. It's about deciding you won't just survive, you'll thrive. That's survival for the fittest, simply deciding that circumstances don't have to define you. Then you're fit to help others still learning to adapt.

We love the dramatic because...well...drama is cool! But the only thing stranger then fiction is reality and seriously, getting stuff to work overseas can be pretty dramatic!