Futility.

I've been pondering futility today. Our culture holds in high regard those who keep trying. We lionize those who keep the faith. So what happens when those admirable qualities come butt up against futility?

Today in Texas a judge ruled that a mother can not demand that her infant be kept on life support when the hospital has deemed the child untreatable. That led my mind dancing over to Florida where Terry Shiavo's parents still believe after all this time that she responds to them. (Perhaps the Texas mother needs to find a nice Florida hospital for her needs.) Are these valuble efforts, or futile?

Still one of my favorite stories is a survival story from Everest. It's one of the stories from the 1996 tragedy where a large number of climbers died. Jon Krakauer wrote a fascinating book about the event. One of the surviving climbers nearly didn't make it. He was lying in the snow and other climbers thought he was dead and hiked right past. He had climbed not knowing that the change in altitude would effect the eye surgery he had and essentially render him blind. He was lying in the snow hoping someone would help him when he realized he was the only hope he had. So he got up and started moving until he managed to blunder into other climbers. In this case what seemed futile was not.

So how does one tell when to keep trying and when to cut your losses?