Survival Story

Cut off Own Arm to Escape

"You probably can't even begin to fathom making the decision to amputate your own arm with a dull knife. But on May 1, 2003, Aron Ralston was left with no other choice. An 800-pound (362.8 kilogram) boulder fell on his arm and trapped him in a Utah canyon wall.

After lying pinned to the canyon for five days, Ralston, running out of food and water, thought chances of being found were slim. He leveraged the boulder to make his bones snap, and he then used his pocket knife to cut away his muscles and tendon. Amazingly, he rappelled down a 65 foot wall and walked until hikers found him.

Ralston is truly a testament of bravery and survival. The amputee has since climbed all of Colorado's peaks and is a motivational speaker."

(Klein, Allison) 

Reflection

Aron showed a huge amount of personal power in this survival story. He showed great amounts of courage and bravery. This story really proves the quote that I used by Lao-Tzu that says power from within is more important than power from without. It took extreme amount of mental strength, courage, and bravery to do what this man did and this could have only been accomplished through harnessing the power from within himself. In the poem Power by Edwina Matthews she talks about a bunch of different things we can get power from within. In this case he got his power from his own will to survive. It would have been easy for Aron to have accepted his fate and died on that canyon wall, but instead he harnessed his power from within and was able to save his own life...