“Create an intermediate word search using this article What would you do? If you were stranded at sea in a small inflatable raft, or stuck in the mountains with a broken leg, or just generally up in the proverbial creek without a paddle, what do you suppose you would do? How long, say, would you swim before letting yourself drown? How long could you hold out hope? We ask these questions—over dinner, at parties, on lazy Sunday afternoons—not because we’re looking for survival tips but because we’re fascinated by our limits and our ability to cope with the kinds of extreme conditions for which there is very little preparation or precedent. Who among us, we want to know, would live to tell the tale? Take Steven Callahan, for example. On February 5, 1982, some 800 miles west of the Canary Islands, his boat, the Napoleon Solo, capsized in a storm. Callahan, then 30, found himself alone and adrift in a leaky inflatable raft with few resources. He collected rainwater for drinking and fashioned a makeshift spear for fishing. He ate barnacles and sometimes the birds attracted to the remains of those barnacles. To maintain his sanity, he took notes on his experience and did yoga whenever his weak body allowed it. Otherwise, he waited and drifted west. Seventy-six days later, on April 21, a boat discovered Callahan off the coast of Guadeloupe. Even today, he is one of the only people to have lasted more than a month at sea on his own. Callahan—an experienced mariner—possessed seafaring skills that were undoubtedly critical to his survival, but were these alone enough to save him? In his book Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea, he describes his state of mind not long after the disaster: About me lie the remnants of Solo. My equipment is properly secured, vital systems are functioning, and daily priorities are set, priorities not to be argued with. I somehow rise above mutinous apprehension, fear, and pain. I am captain of my tiny ship in treacherous waters. I escaped the confused turmoil following Solo ’s loss, and I have finally gotten food and water. I have overcome almost certain death. I now have a choice: to pilot myself to a new life or to give up and watch myself die. I choose to kick as long as I can. Callahan saw his situation, dire though it was, in terms of choice. A vast ocean stretched before him on all sides. He saw nothing but its endless blue surface, below which lurked many dangers. However, in the lapping of the waves and the whistle of the wind, he did not hear a verdict of death. Instead, he heard a question: “Do you want to live?” The ability to hear that question and to answer it in the affirmative—to reclaim for himself the choice that the circumstances seemed to have taken away—may be what enabled him to survive. Next time someone asks you, “What would you do?,” you might take a page from Callahan’s book and reply, “I would choose.” Joe Simpson, another famous survivor, almost died during his descent from a mountain in the icy heights of the Peruvian Andes. After breaking his leg in a fall, he could barely walk, so his climbing partner, Simon Yates, attempted to lower him to safety using ropes. When Yates, who couldn’t see or hear Simpson, unwittingly lowered him over the edge of a cliff, Simpson could no longer steady himself against the face of the mountain or climb back up. Yates now had to support all of Simpson’s weight; sooner or later, he would no longer be able to do so, and both of them would plummet to their deaths. Finally, seeing no alternative, Yates cut the rope, believing he was sentencing his friend to death. What happened next was remarkable: Simpson fell onto a ledge in a crevasse, and over the next few days, he crawled five miles across a glacier, reaching base camp just as Yates was preparing to leave. In Touching the Void, his account of the incident, Simpson writes: The desire to stop abseiling was almost unbearable. I had no idea what lay below me, and I was certain of only two things: Simon had gone and would not return. This meant that to stay on the ice bridge would finish me. There was no escape upwards, and the drop on the other side was nothing more than an invitation to end it all quickly. I had been tempted, but even in my despair I found that I didn’t have the courage for suicide. It would be a long time before cold and exhaustion overtook me on the ice bridge, and the idea of waiting alone and maddened for so long had forced me to this choice: abseil until I could find a way out, or die in the process. I would meet it rather than wait for it to come to me. There was no going back now, yet inside I was screaming to stop. For these two willful men, survival was a matter of choice. And as presented by Simpson, in particular, the choice was an imperative rather than an opportunity; you might squander the latter, but it’s almost impossible to resist the former. Though most of us will never experience such extreme circumstances (we hope), we are nonetheless faced daily with our own imperatives to choose. Should we act or should we hang back and observe? Calmly accept whatever comes our way, or doggedly pursue the goals we have set for ourselves? We measure our lives using different markers: years, major events, achievements. We can also measure them by the choices we make, the sum total of which has brought us to wherever and whoever we are today. When we view life through this lens, it becomes clear that choice is an enormously powerful force, an essential determinant of how we live. But what gives choice its power, and how best can we take advantage of”