Survival Saturday: One More Step.

There are some survival stories that leave you wondering how someone managed to stay alive, and then there are stories that quietly change the way you look at your own life. Joe Simpson’s story has always been one of those for me. Not because he climbed a mountain or because he survived impossible odds, but because of what kept him moving when every logical part of him could have given up.

In 1985, Joe and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, successfully reached the summit of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. Reaching the top of a mountain like that is something most of us will never experience, but as every climber knows, getting to the summit is only half the journey. It’s making it back down that often becomes the real challenge.

During their descent, Joe fell and shattered his leg. At nearly 20,000 feet above sea level, there was no rescue helicopter coming. No cell phone to call for help. No easy way out. Simon spent hours trying to lower Joe down the mountain with ropes, but eventually Joe slipped over the edge of a hidden ice cliff, leaving Simon unable to see him and unable to pull him back up. Simon faced an impossible decision. If he held on, they would likely both die. Believing Joe had already fallen to his death, he cut the rope.

Joe didn’t die.

He landed deep inside a crevasse.

Can you imagine that moment? You’re injured, alone, surrounded by darkness, and the person who was helping you survive has disappeared. Most people would probably assume the story was over.

But somehow, Joe found a way to climb out.

What amazes me isn’t just that he escaped the crevasse. It’s what happened after. His leg was still shattered. He had almost no food or water. Every movement sent pain through his body. The base camp was still miles away across glaciers, loose rock, and unforgiving terrain. There wasn’t a single part of the journey that suggested he should survive it.

Yet somehow, he kept moving.

Not because he believed everything was going to work out. Not because he knew he would make it. He kept moving because he stopped thinking about the entire journey. Instead, he focused on reaching the next rock. Then the next patch of snow. Then the next landmark he could see. He later described making his world incredibly small because looking at the whole mountain was simply too overwhelming.

I don’t know about you, but I think we do the exact opposite.

When life gets hard, we immediately fast-forward months or even years into the future. We ask ourselves how we’re ever going to heal, how we’re going to fix the relationship, survive the divorce, rebuild after loss, recover from trauma, pay off the debt, or become the person we want to be. Before we’ve even taken the first step, we’ve convinced ourselves the mountain is too big to climb.

I’ve done it too.

There have been seasons in my own life when the weight of everything felt impossible. Losing my son. Walking through addiction and recovery. Sitting beside hospital beds wondering if someone I loved was going to make it. Starting over professionally more than once. Stepping into leadership roles that felt far bigger than I felt prepared for. If I had looked at the entire journey all at once, I honestly don’t know that I could have carried it.

What got me through wasn’t having all the answers.

It was simply deciding what the next step needed to be.

Sometimes that next step was asking for help. Sometimes it was showing up to therapy. Sometimes it was getting out of bed, finishing one assignment, making one difficult phone call, or trusting that tomorrow didn’t have to be figured out today.

I see this happen with clients all the time. Someone walks into my office exhausted because they’re measuring today’s progress against where they hope to be a year from now. They’re frustrated because healing feels slow. They’re discouraged because they still have bad days. They assume they’re failing because the mountain is still standing in front of them.

But healing has never worked that way.

Most of the time, healing looks incredibly ordinary. It looks like coming back next week even when you don’t feel like it. It looks like practicing the coping skill that still feels awkward. It looks like choosing not to send the text, setting the boundary, taking the medication, going for the walk, or allowing yourself to cry instead of pretending you’re okay.

None of those moments feel heroic.

But neither did crawling across a glacier one painful movement at a time.

When Joe Simpson finally reached base camp after days of dragging himself across the mountain, the people there could hardly believe what they were seeing. By every expectation, he should have been dead. Instead, he survived because he kept doing the only thing he still had control over: taking the next step.

I think that’s what resilience really is.

Not always feeling hopeful.

Not always feeling strong.

Not having a perfect plan.

Just refusing to let today’s pain convince you that tomorrow doesn’t exist.

If you’re carrying something heavy today, maybe you don’t need to figure out the rest of the mountain. Maybe your only job is to find the next rock in front of you and move toward it. Eventually, you’ll look back and realize that what felt like insignificant steps were actually carrying you somewhere you never thought you’d reach.

Reflection

Question: What mountain are you trying to climb all at once that might become more manageable if you focused only on your next step?

Takeaway: You don’t have to finish the journey today. You only have to keep moving toward the next step in front of you.