The Third Man — not a movie, but a concept — feels correct. People in dire circumstances, some people, find there is a helper presence, leading them to safety.
This article, an excerpt from a book about the subject, tries to ground this "angel" figure in science. And so it might be. Or not.
We all have it — that capacity: a feeling, a voice, in difficult times, that says, "you can get through this." The implied question: Will we listen?
An account of a survivor of 9/11:
He felt that he was being guided: “I was led to the stairs. I don’t think something grabbed my hand, but I was definitely led.” He resumed his descent down the stairwell and soon saw a point of light. … he encountered flames. He recoiled from the fire. But still someone helped him. “There was still danger, so it led me to break through, led me to run through the fire.… There was obviously somebody encouraging me. That’s not where you go, you don’t go toward the fire.…” He covered his head with his forearms and continued down, now running. He was singed by the fire. He believes the flames continued for three stories. Finally, he reached a clear, lit stairwell below the fire, on the 76th floor. Only then did the sense of a benevolent helper, one who had been with him for five minutes, end… “I think at that point it let me go.”
We are such fragile creatures, subject to absurdist fates. But we also have a fierceness of spirit that has probably, as much as cleverness, been the reason we have been able to survive.
