I shared with them what I suddenly realized was the true lesson of my ordeal: It wasn’t cleverness or courage or any kind of competence or savvy that saved us, it was nothing more than love, our love for each other, for our families, for the lives we wanted so desperately to live. Our suffering in the Andes had swept away everything trivial and unimportant. Each of us realized, with a clarity that is hard to describe, that the only crucial thing in life is the chance to love and be loved. In our families, in our futures, we already had everything we needed. The sixteen of us who were lucky
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