The will to live

A very old lady who had devoted her life to pioneer work in education once told about a dangerous illness she had suffered in her middle years. She lay hovering between life and death, in the twilight of half-surrender, when she overheard two of her co-workers talking just outside her hospital room. “If we could only reach her!” one of them said passionately. “If we could only make her understand how much we need her!” The words did reach her, and with the forces of life and death hanging in the balance, they resurrected her will to live. In that moment of discouragement and wavering faith, the intensity of her colleague’s plea reassured her and gave her courage to take up the struggle again. If we truly wish to live, if we have something to live for, then the will to live becomes a powerful force in combatting illness. Within each of us there are two strong instinctual drives, the will to live and the desire to destroy ourselves. The powerful instinct to remain alive is bolstered by our desire to create, to discover and to accomplish. Doctors make obeisance to it when, in a crisis of illness, they say, “We have done all we can – now it is up to the patient.