Aron Ralston: Hero? Saint? Chuck Norris' Long Lost Son?

At any given moment, I could recite to you about ten things that are currently making me anxious. Paying the bills. Finding an awesome new job. Possibly dying of some disease I don‘t yet know I have. Though my doctor sister has assured me of the improbability of my having throat cancer, I remain terrified.

It is far too easy to focus on the negative, on everything that can possibly go wrong. This is another one of those downsides to having an overactive imagination. As children, we create imaginary friends and monsters. As adults, I create imaginary tumors in my larynx and futures where I’m forced to live under a bridge and eat grilled cheese crusts I find in bins around Santa Monica. Needless to say, inspirational posters featuring fluffy, adorable baby animals are usually lost on me.

What does inspire me is when horrible things happen to people, and through the sheer power of their will and mind, they come out all right. Cue Aron Ralston, the famous mountain climber who had to amputate his own arm with a utility tool to free himself from a canyon in Utah. Has anyone ever asked you, if you had to be stranded on a deserted island with one person, who would you want to labor away under the blistering tropical sun with? Seeing as Jacques Cousteau is dead, I’ll take Aron Ralston. I apologize to his wife and newborn son for kidnapping their husband/father, but this is my hypothetical, and I want to live, damn it! I want to live!

A few years ago, I was putzing around the non-fiction section of Borders, and I came across Ralston’s book, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place.” Never has there been a more literal interpretation of that metaphor.

My God, what a book. What a story. You think you have problems? You think your life is hard? Well, you don’t and it’s not, because you are not currently pinned under a boulder in Utah, dying of starvation and possibly septic shock. If this were a game of who has been through more, and you are not a child in a war-torn, third-world country, or Aron Ralston, then you lose. Do you have both your arms? Lose. Haven’t drank your own urine yet? Lose. Tired after spending a whole day on your feet? What a good day to be a loser. Ralston was unable to lay down and rest his legs for almost a week.

Yes, Ralston’s book is absolutely horrifying to read at times, especially if you’re squeamish. He doesn’t hold back with anything, not with the emotional turmoil, not concerning the terrifying transformation as his body began to wither, his damaged right hand actually starting to fester though still attached to his arm.

The most graphic part, of course, is the amputation itself. Reading it made me wince and cry and gasp. I repeat, just reading about it. Imagine actually performing the act yourself. I can’t. The description in the book lasts a couple pages. The actual ordeal took forty minutes. Forty minutes of pausing, cautiously cutting, prodding and examining the wound, and cutting more. Without anesthetics. It was cut your arm off or die, and Ralston chose not to die.

Some may criticize Ralston for having made stupid mistakes that got him into this situation. I myself posted a blog not too long ago, mocking that idiot kid from “Into the Wild” for getting his silly self killed back in Alaska. What was different about Ralston? He made a near fatal mistake of telling no one where he was planning to hike. He himself discusses in the book, the sort of hubris he suffered from that pushed him into these dangerous situations. So what makes him different from the other shmucks who froze to death, or starved to death or got eaten by bears or pygmies or rabid baboons? Is it that he lived to be humbled? Perhaps. All I can say is that after reading the book, I liked Aron Ralston. I admired him, and I felt that if he could have the courage and determination to saw through his own flesh and snap the bones in his own forearm, if it meant living a little longer, than surely I can accept life’s minute frustrations and trials. Perspective, dear friends. It’s all about perspective. More moving even than the detailed descriptions of his physical suffering, were his reflections on family, on friends, on mistakes and regrets, and in the end, what he had left to stay alive for. I also loved the little anecdotes at the end, where Ralston’s sense of humor helps him to adapt to life with only one hand. There’s a particularly hysterical bit concerning a high five gone awry.

These pathetic words cannot convey how Aron Ralston has affected me. I’ve never met him, though I’d like to, for no other reason than to thank him for giving the world something good to think about and reminding me that extraordinary things can happen out of the darkest moments.

Slap that on a motivational poster!

Now, if you happen to live in a big city, or possess a career that allows you to globe trot to international film festivals, you may have seen the film based off of Ralston’s horrific incident, “127 Hours.” Starring the every dreamy James Franco, this is easily the most intense film I have ever watched. Remember those few pages I mentioned? While director Danny Boyle manages to condense Ralston’s forty minutes of self-surgery down to a five minute scene, they were five minutes of movie viewing I will not soon forget.

Let me close with this. Whenever I’m whining about something, my father always asks me, “Are you dying?” To date, I have yet to answer yes. I hope to not answer yes for a long, long time. In other words, I have nothing to whine about. Aron Ralston was dying, and then he turned around, and punched dying in the face with his own amputated arm. Aron Ralston wins.