If you had read, or even had skimed this page where is written what OUTDOOR SURVIVAL means, you would know that the most important in OUTDOOR SURVIVAL is to survive. For many people - outdoor survival means the thrill of emotions, an adventure, straggling with the fate and its tricks, from whom you emerge covered in glory. For others this word associates with difficulties keeping alive. For ones - it's a really great fun, for others it's a matter of life and death. It's similiar to La Fontaine's fairy tale about frogs and boys who were throwing stones in these frogs.
And isn't the live such a mixture of laughter, sweat, and tears? And doesn't a lion's cub just in play prepare to an adult's hunting? And doesn't a small man learn loopholes used by life, only when he is sitting politely in class during the lessons? And can't an adult learn nothing more?
To learn something more means to be prepared on different suprises. Look around: most human's problems result in being unprepared. We are often surprised by the porceeding events, our own lacks. We are preparing through the whole of our life to act a professional role, sometimes we are prepared to set a family, but we have problems to help a man who was hit by a car.*
HELPLESSNESS is a really depressing thing. This feeling of helplessness doesn't allow us to take such steps as we would desire. It makes us people who are full of complexes, are nervous and have got gastrics. Important matters and occassions run away, we lose our chances, we seek something which probably don't find it, because we don't belive in it.
The situation becomes dramatic, when we are trying to take possesion of something which is a vital matter. Vital in the full meaning of this word - here begins fight about survival.
Is it difficult to imagine ourselves a fire, in the middle of it we are?
Does it belong to impossible things to getting lost in the mountains in winter, killing cold and spending a night outside your home?
Can't your eyes of imagination show you how we are imprisoned in the wreck of a crashed car?
Doesn't an attack or even ordinary attachment by drunk hooligans arouses a FEAR in us?
Such fear, which makes us think about proacting ourselves against this type of situation.
This fear awakens very often our the worst enemy - PANIC. Helplessness, fear and panic arise from the UNKNOWLEDGE.
Apart from fear, very dangerous for us is also DISCOURAGEMENT. It comes when we are hungry, thirsty or it is cold, or we are in a deft stick, when we suspect that nobody will be looking for us, when we have problems with our health, when we aren't in a good fit, when we only want to sleep and forgete about everything...
Discouragement is the same as THE LACK OF WILL. All known facts connected with survival in extremal conditions were joined strong will, which doesn't allow to give in. Did you hear about superhuman concentration of physical strength, when somebody was so determined and also full of fight about the life?
Here is mother carrying a concrete plate, which had crushed his child - later this plate was carried by 5 men.
Here is a man, who fell out of the wondow of sky - scraper and grasped of somethig and in this position he was hanging many hours, till somebody heard his call about help.
Let's try to do it yourself.
Everything can happen in your life, after having appeared THIRST and HUNGER, COLD or HEAT, GETTING LOST and TIREDNESS, SOLITUDE or LACK of COMMUNICATION and SOLUTIONS.
Jacek Palkiewicz stresses three the most important things to survive. The first thing is the WILL of LIFE. Then second thing is the WILL of LIFE, and the third thing is the WILL of LIFE. Then appears the matter of instruction, equipment and "these other things". But I think, that the will of life fantastically increases the knowledge about survival.
A tragic, dramatic situation can be conquered through our will, even thanks to small trifles, "accompaning" matters. Such a trifle could be, that an officer in a surrounded trend by enemies... is shaving precisely. Soldiers sometimes felt an inflow of strength and in this way they could survive. And in the worst case they could be taken prisoner with the taking heart.
I should add one more reason why you should make your own survival. The reason is much more serious than it could be appeared. I suppose that you understand what's going on. Well, for a long time owing to civilizing, technical and cultural changes, a man turn into a passive consumer of goods. This problem was noticed many years ago. Their cautions aren't taken into consideration too willingly, because the consumption and passiveness are joined bliss and comodity. It appeared a new scientific definition: ACQUIRED HELPLESSNESS.
An acquired helplessness is something another than sudden helplessness, which occurs in the face of a surprising even, and means "programmatic" stay an action by an individual owing to different, appearing problems. A man looks at them ... and waits till somebody comes and helps him. Saying more scientifically: an aquired helplessnessmeans the state of avoiding to take decisions and the state of avoiding an activity because of the reason of no statement of relations between own decisions and own activity and appearing changes in our surrounding reality. I think, that it sounds complicated enough.
An acquired helplessness is such a universal phenomenon, that we don't realize it. Of course we loose a lot of it. I don't mind economical losses, owing to bad decisions taken by people who are responsible for an economy. The losses appear in oyour family, in families of everybody. Parents often feel the lack of abilities and possibilities to come into the world of their childrens, they loose the fresh look, beeing spontaneaus, they feel veeeery adulty, up to such grade that it is "improper: for them to do many things. And they don't do it. Neither at home, nor at work. In the face of teen's problems they became totally helplessness. Their children don't look for understanding at any price. The knowledge of children is continually completed by their peers, because they consider themselves to be experts.
And how often young people look for a wisdom in adults ?
It appears, that they are looking for. But it must be fulfilled one condition, that an adult ahould have a wisdom. It is difficult, because they often cut off their children's hobbies. But isn't a survival expedition a good idea for breaking a generarion gap? Think about it.
The opposite of helplessness is thinking about possessing an influence on creating the reality.
I teach my students one basic rule which should accompany at my work: when you want to be an effective teacher, you should became a guide, what means that you know where you lead them and they want to come with you. Upbringing means common excursion, with common responsibility for ourselves. Survival can became a common excursion through the life "in pill".
I came to the conclusion that this type of excursion can be really valuable for finding a friendship between difficult pupils of educational school and their educators. It is very important to "install some brakes", not to appear a bravado in their behaviour, because in many, easy situations for an experienced man, young people became timid and bottled up.
Probably a self - preservation instinct, makes many people accept the thinking about theirselves as about indestructible persons: "It can't happen to me". Then a man belives ai talismans, in possessing a map, a weeping gas, in the pocket, in a luck. It happens that he is so naive that he belives in nothing.
In making survival, it is essential to have KNOWLEDGE, acquired ABILITIES, and a good SCHOOLING in them, possessing SELF-CONFIDENCE which is the result of the former points.
I can't also forget about RESPONSIBILITY which should accompany survivalers. It is strange, but responsibility is often demanded by... responsible people.
The anothers also demand... but only from others. Maybe that's why , that giving others our responsibility, all of us loose, when we don't get it mutually from others. But responsible people can do it.
They have feeling of their own value and interior strength. Because here we are simultanously dealing with understanding the situaltion, beeing confident, with avoiding of judging us and others on bigger losses. The last one says also about possessing imagination. Irresponsible people are irresponsible from stupidity, laziness, commodity, because, if somebody wants to be responsible, must work a lot. Also for others...