How to Live When It’s Dead Easy to Die

With a violent jerk and a gut-dropping fall, he was swinging 14 feet from the top of the snowy crevasse. Hanging by a leather rope attached to his waist.

The blue light eerily streaming through the patches of ice.

The sledge wedged into the snow and ice above him was the only thing keeping him alive.

As he swung helplessly, his feet unable to reach either side of the crevasse to push off and climb, his only thought was that he had not finished eating the rest of the food on his sledge.

But there he was. Alone. Frozen. His feet flailing wildly in a bottomless crevasse. 

Death was all but certain. It was just a matter of time. 

It was January in 1913 in a remote section of Antarctica. Douglas Mawson was the leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, a team of 31 scientists and adventurers pursuing the most ambitious exploration yet of the southern continent. 

Mawson aimed to return with the most scientific analysis of the area, including geography, meteorology, magnetic measurements, biology, atmospheric science, and glacial movements.

From the start, it was clear that every part of their journey would be a struggle of magnificent proportion.

Their base camp at Commonwealth Bay was built on an ice shelf that proved to be entirely unlivable. The average constant wind speed that year was 50 mph — with Mawson recording regular winds approaching 200 mph. 

With blizzard conditions daily, this was quite literally the windiest place on the planet.

In those harsh conditions it took the team 10 months to build out their camp and put together plans for their expedition deeper into Antarctica.

Once their home base was completed, the team of scientists and explorers divided into eight different teams that were assigned different scientific missions across Antarctica. Fanning out from their windy base at Commonwealth Bay.

It was the raw conquest of human spirit against the toughest conditions nature could muster. 

By December 14, 1912, despite the impossible odds against them, Douglas Mawson and his small 2-man team and several dozen dogs were 35 days and almost 300 miles into their exploration. He had assigned himself the hardest of the 8 different explorations.

They had already crossed 2 glaciers and hundreds of deadly crevasses where deep holes in the ice were masked by a light powdering of snow.

That Saturday morning in December appeared to be no different. 

Xavier Mertz, one of Switzerland's best mountain climbers, had won the World ski-jumping championship three years earlier. He was guiding a dog sled ahead of Mawson. 

He raised his pole signalling a dangerous crevasse ahead and carefully navigated his way diagonally across the thin ice instead of head-on. It was the strategy that most often prevented tragedy. 

Mawson did the same.

Ahead of him, Mertz turned around, hearing the same sound himself. It was the look on his face that shook Mawson to his core.

A gaping hole in the snowbridge behind them showed a crevasse 150 feet deep. Far below, a husky lay whimpering with a broken back. 

There was no other sign of their companion, Lieutenant Belgrave Ninnis, or the sledge he was leading.

He was gone. Along with their best dogs, their tent, and nearly their entire food supply for the expedition. 

This spelled certain demise for their expedition. But they were determined to make the best of the few resources left on the two remaining sledges.

They improvised a tent out of extra sledge runners they had brought with them and a tent cover they found at the bottom of one of their packs. It was just enough room for both of them to crawl into.

Huddling together in the hopes that their collective body heat would keep them alive through the night as the weather conditions worsened. The temperature dropping to -96°F.

It was so cold that boiling water for coffee would freeze into an icy mist within seconds of being lifted off the tiny camp burner. 

The next morning they began their race home. And for the first few days they made what seemed like excellent time.

But it wasn't long until their dogs gave out.

Underfed. Malnourished. Weakened by the extra effort and intensity. They slowed. And crawled. And then dropped.

When the huskies could no longer pull the sledge, Mertz and Mawson carried them to their makeshift camp for the day and shot them, eating as much of the meat as they could stomach and throwing the scraps to the rest of the dogs.

It wasn't long before only a single dog, Ginger, was able to pull the sledge. So the two men hitched themselves to the harness and pulled alongside her. And pulled.

Together, they would only make it a few miles before they collapsed, exhausted by the snow drifts that were 4 feet tall in places.

And it wasn't just the dogs that were dying. Mertz, an accomplished Swiss polar explorer and mountaineer, was sick, and losing weight rapidly. His fingers were horrifically frostbitten and he was too weak to move. 

He couldn't go on.

Determined not to let his friend die, Mawson convinced him to ride in the sledge while he pulled it a few miles each day. Day after day, Mawson pulled as Mertz's condition steadily deteriorated into a slow and painful death. He was losing his mind as he slipped into the white, frozen tundra of an unforgiving landscape.

After burying his friend, Mawson was determined to make it back to base, but most of his food was gone and his body was in horrible condition.

He had open sores on his lips, nose, and scrotum. Hair was falling out of his head in large clumps and the skin on his legs was peeling off in large strips. The soles of his feet had detached completely from the skin and sinew that was holding together the rest of his foot. 

Using tape from his pack he desperately attached the dead soles back to the bottom of his feet to avoid possible infection in the new raw skin — and then covered his feet with 6 pairs of wool socks.

But with every step, blood and pus oozed from the bottom of his battered feet. It was a pain unlike anything he had known in the past. 

He had to make it 80 miles back to camp and was growing desperately weaker by the day.

Step by step. Day by day. He made his way toward home.

And then he stepped through an ice bridge and found himself hanging by a rope in a deep, blue, deadly crevasse. Weakened by hypothermia and near starvation, he hung 14 feet below his sledge which was straddling both edges of the crevasse.

He reached for the first knot in the rope and desperately pulled himself up. Holding on, he reached for the next knot. And then the next. 

Inch by inch he pulled himself up the harness rope. Praying that the sledge wedged into the ice would hold while he flailed wildly beneath the edges of the frozen surface.

Exhausted. He reached the top of the crevasse. Rolling his body onto the snow covered lip of the crevasse. 

Then. Darkness. 

A violent jerk. And a gut-dropping fall.

The impact tore the air from his lungs.

He passed out from the shock. 

His weight had caused the edge of the frozen crevasse to break off, plunging him back down into the icy tomb. 

His raw hands were slippery with blood. His fingers were frozen and numb. 

Utter despair overwhelmed him. He wanted to die. It was too much for him to bear.

He had made it so far. All to be undone by one more tragedy.

As the shock began to wear off. He took stock of his situation.

The pain of the cold. The hollow stomach that screamed to be fed. His body was devastated by sores and exposed, bloody wounds.

He reached for the knife inside his jacket. He would cut the leather strap. He would end his suffering. 

Mawson swung quietly in the tangles of the harness rope. Completely overwhelmed by the series of events that had led him to this moment.

It was in the quietness of that solemn moment that a verse from his favorite poet, Robert Service, flashed through his mind: "Just have one more try — it's dead easy to die. It's the keeping-on-living that's hard."

He would sit with that line for some time. Slowly returning his knife to the inside pocket of his animal skin jacket. 

And then he began to attempt the challenge of the poem.

Inch by inch. Minute by minute. Knot by knot.

Hands slippery with blood.

Mawson made his way back up the rope. All fourteen feet. 

Time stood still as the courage to live became the only obsession of his mind. 

When he reached the top of the crevasse, he pushed his feet out first. As far across the edge of the frozen surface as possible. And then he pulled his weakened frame free of the edge, away from the sledge, rolled over and passed out. 

He had exhausted every fiber of will and resolve in his attempt to keep on living.

Hours later he would wake up covered in layers of snow. He got to his feet and did the only thing he knew to do. He kept walking.

Days later he would find a chest of supplies left by a rescue party of his fellow explorers who ventured out looking for him. He found food, supplies, and a map showing him the final 28 miles back to base. 

When he arrived, the Aurora, a rescue ship sent from Australia to rescue them, was on the edges of the horizon, having left just 5 hours earlier. That same ship would not return for Mawson and the 6 men who stayed behind to find him for another 10 months.

But he was alive. He had survived against all odds.

He had done the hard thing. He had made the choice to keep on living. 

When Mawson finally reached Australia the following February, he was welcomed as a national hero and knighted by King George V. It is Douglas Mawson's face you'll see on the Australian one hundred dollar banknote.

His life was an improbable story of courage and triumph made possible by his decision to keep on living. A hard thing at the time.

It's the "keeping on living" that is hard.

So let's talk about it. 

You will likely never find yourself fourteen feet down in an Antarctic crevasse.

You may be sitting at your kitchen table staring at a number you cannot pay.

Your job may be asking more than you have left.

A relationship may have come apart so completely it feels like someone tore a piece out of your chest.

You may be watching your parents become older, smaller, more forgetful versions of themselves.

You may be watching a child you love walk toward a life you cannot control.

Sometimes we meet the hard thing in front of us. We get up. We make the call. We let a friend come over. We do the next piece of work. We try.

Other times, we quit without saying a word.

Our feet keep moving. We show up at work. We answer the text. We make the dinner reservation.

Inside, we have already stopped fighting.

I call it the slow death.

You are the walking dead.

Your body gets out of bed. You get dressed. You take the call. You sit at the dinner table. You do what people expect you to do.

But something in you already gave up.

Nobody knows. For a while. 

I have been close to that edge myself.

I started my book, Edgy Conversations, with this line: "I could still feel the taste of gun oil in my mouth."

Because I wanted to end it all.

More than twenty years ago, I was drunk, sitting on the steps into my garage, with a gun in my mouth. Feeling alone. All done. Broken.

Betrayal had cut me so deep that the agony felt unbearable.

I wanted the pain to go away. I could not fix what was broken. I could not force love or loyalty on people who had decided I was not worth it.

I felt worthless. Hopeless. Helpless. 

But somewhere behind all that noise was a small part of me that wanted another chance. I wondered what was on the other side of the pain, fear, and rejection.

So I put the gun down. And walked back into the house. And fell into bed. 

I just wanted one more chance. Little did I know the battle that was ahead of me. 

Hear me now, closely. There have been more than a hundred times when I did not have a gun in my mouth, but I still felt finished. Dead on the inside.

I had given up on life. Quit. Just waiting for the final blow to finish me off. Too tired to continue.

No one knew. 

Because something in my life would jolt me out of that malaise. 

A person. A moment. A challenge. A responsibility I was willing to walk away from. Something would make me look up long enough to realize I was still here, still alive. 

What was I doing with that second chance?

That is the conflict I am talking about.

Internal conflict is one thing we can control. Not the immediate pain itself. Not the sense of loss. Not the terrible thing that happened.

What we can control is how we handle the fight inside our own heads. That reaction that comes from overwhelm. 

You know the questions:

Those are normal questions when life gets too heavy, but they become dangerous when you let them control your actions and dictate your outcomes.

So what can you do when the pain of "keeping on living" gets too great?

When uncertainty is overwhelming. When conflict and panic boil over and leave no room for movement.

I do not have a tidy answer for you. I cannot give you a trick that makes grief, debt, betrayal, sickness, or fear go away.

I do know that the slow death happens in the dark. It happens when no one knows how close you are to giving up.

There is a path through the darkness. There is a way forward when your head is full, your chest is tight, and you are too tired to see past the bad minutes. These are for the moments when you are overwhelmed but still able to take one small action.

If you think you may hurt yourself, skip the list. Tell someone near you. Do not stay alone. In the United States and its territories, call or text 988. If there is immediate danger, call 911 or go to an emergency department.

For everyone else, start here.

When the pressure gets heavy, your body can act as if you are trapped in a burning room.

You stare at the screen. Your hands go cold. Your chest gets tight. You read the same email, the same text, the same bill, as if the answer will suddenly appear in the words.

It will not.

Get up.

Walk around your cubicle. Walk the floor. Go outside and circle the building. Buy a coffee you do not need. Take the stairs down and back up. Put your shoes on and run until your lungs wake up. Do twenty squats in the bathroom. Drop to the floor and do push-ups until your arms shake.

You do not need a gym membership, a playlist, or an hour blocked out on your calendar with a physical trainer. 

You need to move.

Movement builds momentum. Not the other way around. 

That is true at mile twenty-five. It is also true at 2:37 in the afternoon when you cannot make yourself answer an email.

Walk. Pace. Stretch. Clean the kitchen. Take the dog around the block. Stand in the sun for five minutes. Put on a sweatshirt and walk to the mailbox. Do something that makes your body work instead of sitting still and listening to the worst voice in your head.

A walk will not fix the marriage or pay the bill. It may give you enough room to avoid a decision while you are overwhelmed.

Your mind wants to remind you of every bad thing that has ever happened to you. Do not give it the space.

Make your legs work. Then come back and decide what comes next.

When you are overwhelmed, the voice in your head grows loud.

It tells you nobody would understand, that you are just a burden, to wait until you have cleaned yourself up enough to ask for help. But that's all a lie. 

You'll find that out as soon as you call someone.

Call your dad. Call your sister. Call the friend who has seen you at your worst and still answers the phone. Call your pastor or therapist. Call the person who will sit in the driveway with you at 2am without demanding a polished explanation.

You do not need a speech.

Try this: "I am not okay. Can you stay on the phone with me?"

Or this: "I'm struggling."

Or this: "I am so overwhelmed. Can we talk?"

Or this: "I do not know what to do next. Can you help me?"

That is enough.

If you are overwhelmed but safe, start with one person and ask for one clear thing. A ride. A meal. Ten minutes on the phone. Help making an appointment. Someone to sit beside you while you open the bill you have avoided for six weeks.

When you say it out loud you start to realize how much love and help and understanding is available to you.

When pain peaks, you will want to do something about it — because pain demands action. 

The danger is that pain is a terrible strategist. It wants you to make the problem bigger, not smaller. It wants you to burn the bridge while you are still standing on it.

You will feel like sending an angry email, saying the thing you cannot unsay, walking out the door, or lighting the match because at least lighting the fire feels like you taking charge of your life.

What happens when the wave passes, the adrenaline drains, and you wake up standing in the ashes of something you actually needed?

The marriage. The job. The friendship. The investment. You burned it during the worst hour of your life. Now you have to live in the wreckage of your bad decision while you try to put yourself back together.

Do not let pain make decisions your future has to clean up.

Make the next hour safer. Not easier. Safer.

Leave the house if you need to. Put distance between you and anything that could make the problem bigger, including anything you could use to hurt yourself. 

Get through the next few hours without making a choice you cannot take back.

And not just the choice to take your life. I mean the email. The phone call. Social media. The bridge you light on fire because the heat of flames feels like honesty.

Let that fire stay inside you for now. Do not spread it.

If you may hurt yourself, get another human being involved and use the crisis resources already named above. 

A wise mentor used to tell me: "If you can't do something brilliant, don't do something stupid."

He was right.

Don't make tomorrow's problem bigger with today's shortsighted behavior.

Panic makes everything show up at once.

The unpaid bill. The email from your boss. The doctor appointment. The marriage that has gone quiet.

Your mind puts all of it in one pile and tells you that you have to fix the whole thing right now.

You do not.

Pick one thing that takes less than fifteen minutes.

Do not pay the whole bill. Open the envelope. Look at the number. Put the due date on a piece of paper.

Do not solve the whole job. Answer one email. Make a list of what is actually due. Ask your boss which part matters most.

Do not repair the whole relationship. Send one honest message: "I know things have been bad. I do not know how to fix it tonight. I do not want to keep pretending nothing is wrong."

Do not rebuild your whole health. Make the appointment. Drink a glass of water. Take the medicine you were prescribed. Put your gym shoes by the door.

Do not solve your entire life. Take a shower. Eat something with actual food in it. Wash one plate. Change the sheets. Text one person back.

The rule is simple: Do something super small that begins to solve a problem and spend less than 15 minutes working on it.

If you are feeling momentum, pick another one. 

Remember that no challenge is bigger than a series of next steps. 

You will not work your way out of humiliation, doubt, and fear in one heroic burst. Most success comes from many small things moving in the same direction, not one big thing.

There are days when all you can do is open the bill, take the shower, eat the sandwich, and send the message.

Do those things.

The next step has to be real.

When life starts coming apart, your first instinct may be to do more.

More work. More calls. More late nights. More coffee. More pretending you can carry it all if you just push harder.

That always makes the crash worse.

Do the opposite. Make everything simple.

Eat real food. Sleep as much as you can. Take the medication you were prescribed. Get outside long enough to see daylight. Move your body. Keep the one appointment you need to keep. Let one person check on you.

You do not need to answer every email. You do not need to attend every meeting. You do not need to be funny at dinner, productive at work, or available to every person who has an opinion about your life.

Cancel what can wait.

Tell people "No."

Let the laundry sit in the basket. Order takeout. Wear the same sweatshirt again. Skip the party. Tell your friend you cannot talk about their drama tonight because you are trying to keep your own head above water.

Your job may be far smaller right now.

Wake up. Eat breakfast. Take the dog outside. Take your medication. Shower. Sit in the sun. Show up for the appointment. Answer the phone when the person who loves you calls.

That is what you do when the weight is too heavy and some things can wait.

You are allowed to lower the bar for a while. You are allowed to let someone bring you food. You are allowed to ask for a ride. You are allowed to say, "I cannot do that right now."

Make your life small enough to hold. Then hold it.

It is for my nephew Drew, who passed away a few years ago on May 25. I wish I could have sat with him and had a conversation like the one I am having here with you.

On my left knee, above the joint, I have the phrase "Yma o Hyd." It is Welsh. The song was written by a man named Dafydd Iwan in 1983. The coal mines were closing. The steelworks were shutting down. Thatcher was breaking the back of Welsh industry, and Iwan himself was in the middle of a terrible divorce. Everything was coming apart.

He wrote a song that said one thing: "We are still here."

"Despite everything and everyone and even ourselves. Still here."

Every evening when I pull on my running shorts, I look down and see both knees. Forever 22 reminds me of the one who got away. Yma o Hyd reminds me that I did not. I am still here.

And if I am still here, I should do something with it.

I do not always know what that something is. Some days it is just showing up. Some days it feels like I am 14 feet down in a crevasse with bloody hands and nothing left. I am not always winning.

But I am still here.

That is the whole thing. Just the truth. One more day. One more knot up the rope.

The song refuses to disappear. So did Mawson, hanging in that crevasse with a knife in his jacket and a line from Robert Service running through his head.

I think that is enough.

Resurgam.