Life is Like Survivor

Posted by Lorren on May 16, 2011

The twenty-second season of Survivor is winding down. I know that it’s over already, but I maintain a few Survivor web pages that I’ve been updating. I’m almost done. Summer break will be nice.

During the Survivor Reunion today, Grant said that Survivor was a reflection of who you were on the inside. I think that to some degree, that’s true. While contestants can probably skew their play style a bit, the most manipulative of the bunch (Russell Hantz) have those tendencies in real life. Survivor might magnify the flaws that people have, much like a child typically won’t lie to you unless doing so will either get them something or will get them out of trouble. A few really good people have been through Survivor as well, as I discovered when I created my Survivor Winners page. Some people, like Yul Kwon, are very smart. Some have gone on to start charities (most of those were very likable in the game).

Like Survivor, our personalities come through (although we can fool some people for some amount of time). We can play the game with integrity, or lie and manipulate when it is convenient for us. We can use other people, or we can do the right thing.

Throughout our lives, potential scenarios pop up where we have to decide to do the right thing, or do the wrong thing because it is more advantageous to us. Sometimes we have to choose ahead of time to do the right thing.

I’ve met a lot of really cool people in my life. Some of them are quite well-known. Others are not as well-known, but they still have their own pages in Wikipedia. I’ve lived next door to a couple of these people.

I am a writer. I’m not really into celebrities, but I write about people a lot. I write quite a bit about politics. There is a line that I have to draw. While I might tell a nice story about how I locked myself out of my room once and my (now well-known) neighbor helped me get back into my apartment, I wouldn’t tell the world where someone’s kid went to day care (unless they wanted me to tell others). I wouldn’t reveal information that you would expect to be confidential. That’s not right.

We have to live our lives with integrity. Unlike Survivor, life lasts a lot more than 39 days. It’s not my job to be a gossip columnist. I don’t need to stab people in the back to get ahead.