The survival I came to know on this trip was about something completely different. It was, above all, about letting yourself be affected by the changing world around you. Not just riding it out, but adapting, molting. Not succumbing to the luxury of despair, but keeping a foothold in possibility. Not blocking the world out, but letting it in.

There is a traditional optimistic story that runs as follows. Our hero is a prisoner who has been sentenced to death by a tyrannical king, but gains a reprieve by promising to teach the king’s favourite horse to talk within a year. That night, a fellow prisoner asks what possessed him to make such a bargain. He replies, ‘A lot can happen in a year.

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NC: Well, we are told relentlessly that the world is doomed. The media amplifies this idea to the point of hysteria. We are conditioned to only see the world in terms of oppression and corruption and degradation. To some degree it is hard not be sucked into this torrent of despair, to become hardened and cynical. However, it doesn’t take much to... See more