Survival begins with conception. Think of the odds against being born. It's astronomical! Of the trillions of women who have become mothers since the human race began, one gave birth to you. Now think of the hundreds of thousands of sperm that compete with each other every time a man and a woman have sex. Only one struggled through the mass of wannabees to join the egg in your mother's womb and become you. It was the same for me. So, I love being alive. Able to see, hear, smell, taste and touch. Able to know, not only with my senses, but with my memories and my understanding of what happened yesterday, last week and even years ago. Okay, you got me. I admit that every now and then I go out to the car port and suddenly realize I've forgotten why I headed that way and what I had planned to do when I got there. But that's okay because when I get back in the house my wife reminds me of the honey-do errand she sent me on. Hey, I do the same for her when she forgets why she went into the kitchen! But there are some benefits to having a short term like being able to hide my own Easter eggs... So, I'm not looking forward to not being alive. Ah, you didn't know that's where I was going with this, did you? That's okay. I know how likely it is that you feel the same way. So, let's remind each other that becoming a survivor begins with wanting to be alive, not dead. Everyone dies. Surviving is saying not today and doing whatever it takes to make it so for family and friends.
The conscious will to survival does not occur at conception, it comes with the sense of 'self', the avoidance of pain, and a recognition and understanding of one's own mortality...some embrace the extinction of one's own self, whilst others avoid that finality by all means possible. Survival consists of staying alive on one's own terms for as long as one feels that life is worth living, or that continuing to live has some kind of significant purpose. I agree with the sentiment that surviving is saying "not today" (to death), but would add that it would be provisionally saying not tomorrow, or the days after that...survivors also look to the future, not simply the present day. Fortunately, us humans (and indeed many other species in the animal kingdom) have been endowed with certain evolutionary capabilities that aid our own survival, before we have acquired those functions through learned behaviour.
