Do the Next Right Thing

“Troubles never need to be permanent nor fatal. Darkness always yields to light. The sun always rises. Faith, hope, and charity will always triumph in the end. Furthermore, they will triumph all along the way.”

– Jeffrey R. Holland, “Banishing All Shadows,” April 2018

The books that most captivate me tell stories of survival. I’ve read a lot about explorers and prisoners of war, drawn in by their perseverance through danger and deprivation. When my niece was deep down the rabbit hole of dystopian YA fiction, I told her that real life is much more interesting than fiction, and couldn’t I convince her to read about unbelievable things that actually happened? It took a while, but she got there and really enjoyed this book I gave her. It’s not about an Antarctic expedition or WWII, but it is about a survivor. If we pay attention, we find survival stories everywhere because, well, we’re all survivors.

Maybe I find survival stories so engaging because they provide roadmaps. I get to see the tactics people use in their hardest moments. Some come out heroes, some anti-heroes. Either way, the lessons are instructive. 

I just read this article from Field and Stream (what? I read broadly) titled “How to Survive for Three Days in the Wilderness.” Super interesting, and backs up what my neighbor who volunteers for Search and Rescue has told me. Children, he says, are easier to find than adults because when they recognize they are lost, they stop moving. Adults try to reason their way out, keep moving, and tend to get themselves further from help rather than closer. “Become as little children” indeed.

Anyway, while reading, these lines in the article stood out to me: “Survival is all about persistence. Studies show that survivors are the people who persist in doing one thing right, then the next thing right, and so on.”

As a reader, this feels a little patronizing. Of course those who survive do right things; if they did wrong things, they’d die. But the point here is doing one thing right. And then the next thing right. And then the next.

When I’m in survival mode, I quickly become overwhelmed thinking I have to do all the things right, immediately, in order to make it through. This is self defeating. What I should do is slow down and focus on simply doing the next right thing (thank you, Anna). 

Do the next right thing. And one day your survival story will be someone else’s roadmap to safety.

These are some of my all-time favorite books. And they also happen to be survival stories. 
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
Unbroken: A WWII Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less by Terry Ryan
Where Rivers Change Direction by Mark Spragg
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan
The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom
The Standard of Truth: 1815-1846 (Saints #1) by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
No Unhallowed Hand: 1846-1893 (Saints #2) by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints