“What matters is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.” — Viktor Frankl

I have been thinking about Nepal since 26 August 2026.

Not just thinking about the floods. Thinking about life.

About how fragile it is.

About how, in a matter of minutes, everything we spend years building—our homes, our possessions, our plans, our certainty—can disappear beneath a wall of water and mud.

And yet, somehow, life survives.

Hope survives.

And perhaps most surprisingly, faith becomes stronger.

The flash floods that struck Nepal on 26 August were devastating. The Bhote Koshi region witnessed an extraordinary surge of water, destroying homes, roads, bridges and critical infrastructure. The Nepalese government described the damage as extensive and mobilised security and disaster-response agencies for search, rescue and relief operations.

But when I look beyond the numbers, I don’t see only a disaster.

I see human beings.

I see a girl running uphill carrying her three-year-old brother while her home disappeared behind her. Thirteen-year-old Sonika Nagarkoti was at home when the warning came. She picked up her little brother and ran towards higher ground. Behind her, the house where her family had lived for generations was swept away. She didn’t know where her parents were. She didn’t know what would happen next.

She simply ran, and that, perhaps, is one of the most extraordinary things about human beings.

When everything becomes uncertain, something inside us says:

Keep going.

The story of Nepal’s Blue House has stayed with me too.

Images showed a house standing amid the violent floodwaters while neighbouring structures were swallowed by the torrent. The people inside were trapped, surrounded by water, waiting for help. Eventually, rescue teams reached them and brought them out safely.

I keep imagining what it must have felt like inside that house, the sound of water, the fear, the uncertainty, the question every person must have asked silently:“Will we survive this?”

And yet, they did.

Sometimes survival doesn’t look heroic.

Sometimes survival is simply waiting.

Sometimes it is holding the hand of the person next to you.

Sometimes it is refusing to give up.

Then came another story that made me stop and think—the story of a school principal and teacher who understood that disaster does not give you time to prepare once it has arrived. Rajendra Dadabi, the principal of Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School, acted when he received warning of the approaching flood. He initiated the evacuation of the students and moved them towards higher grounds. Reports say his quick thinking helped save 1,643 children.

Imagine standing responsible for more than a thousand children while knowing that something terrifying is approaching. There is no time for a committee meeting, no time for perfect information. No time to ask, “What if I’m wrong?”

There is only one question: “What do I do now?”

And he acted, that is where I began wondering about the human brain.

We often imagine courage as something people are born with.

Maybe it isn’t, maybe courage is partly a trained response, maybe the brain can be taught that when chaos arrives, we don’t freeze—we observe, decide and move.

And then there is the elephant story, a video circulated online showing an elephant helping rescue a person trapped in floodwater. It was incredibly moving, but fact-checkers established that the footage was actually recorded in Assam, India, weeks before the Nepal disaster—not in Nepal.

For me, that correction doesn’t make the image less meaningful, It makes the lesson different. Because compassion doesn’t belong to one country. It doesn’t belong only to humans.

And perhaps nature keeps reminding us of something we sometimes forget:

When another life is drowning, instinct can become more powerful than fear.

The fifth story I keep returning to is not about one hero.

It is about ordinary people, families helping families, villagers warning one another, rescuers entering places that others were desperately trying to escape, soldiers flying helicopters into devastated areas. People sharing whatever little food, water or shelter they had.

The Nepalese Army and other rescue teams continued extracting survivors from areas cut off by the floods, including people trapped in a mud-filled hydropower tunnel.

India also sent emergency relief material and specialist teams to support Nepal’s response. And suddenly the disaster becomes bigger than the flood. It becomes a story about humanity.

Because when civilisation is stripped down to its most basic form, perhaps we discover what really matters.

Not the car.

Not the house.

Not the bank balance.

Not the position we hold.

Not the arguments we thought were so important yesterday.

When water rises to the roof, we don’t ask someone what their salary is.

We ask:

“Are you safe?”

And that question may be one of the purest expressions of humanity.

So, I find myself asking:

What would I do if something like this happened to me?

The first thing, I think, would be to fight the instinct to panic.

Not because fear is wrong.

Fear is natural.

But panic consumes the very seconds we need for survival.

The first response should be:

STOP. LOOK. THINK. MOVE.

Stop long enough to understand what is happening.

Look for the safest direction—not necessarily the easiest one.

Think about higher ground, exits, children, elderly people and people who cannot move quickly.

Then move.

Do not wait for perfect information, do not return for possessions, do not attempt to cross rapidly moving floodwater simply because it looks shallow.

And most importantly, don’t become so focused on saving yourself that you forget the person beside you.

But can we actually train the brain for this?

I believe we can.

Emergency drills work because repetition changes behaviour.

We practise fire drills.

We practise evacuation.

We practise first aid.

We teach children where to go during earthquakes.

Why shouldn’t we practise the mental response too?

Every family can occasionally ask:

Where is the highest safe place in our home?

What happens if electricity goes out?

Where are the emergency numbers?

Who will take care of the children?

What if mobile phones stop working?

Where will we meet if we become separated?

And perhaps most importantly:

What is the first thing I will do?

When the brain has already imagined a crisis, the real crisis becomes slightly less unfamiliar, that doesn’t guarantee survival. But preparation can buy something incredibly valuable:

seconds……

And sometimes, as Nepal has shown us, seconds can become the difference between life and death. What has affected me most about these stories is not simply that people survived. It is that survival appeared in so many different forms.

A teenager carrying a little brother.

A family waiting inside a house surrounded by water.

A teacher thinking about hundreds of children before himself.

Rescuers entering places filled with mud and danger.

Communities helping one another.

And somewhere far away, an elephant reaching towards another living being in distress.

Different stories.

Different circumstances.

But the same message.

Life wants to live.

And perhaps hope is not the belief that everything will be fine, perhaps hope is much deeper, hope is what makes a frightened child keep running uphill. Hope is what makes a parent search through ruins. Hope is what makes a rescuer enter the water. Hope is what makes a family wait for someone who has not yet returned.

And faith? I don’t think faith means believing that nothing bad will ever happen…

The floods remind us that terrible things can happen to good people.

Faith, perhaps, is believing that even when we cannot control what happens around us, we can still choose who we become inside it.

We can choose courage.

We can choose compassion.

We can choose to help.

We can choose not to give up.

As I think about, I realise something about my own life. Perhaps I have spent too much time worrying about what I might lose.

The flood has made me wonder instead about what remains when everything else is taken away. And the answer seems surprisingly simple.

Life remains.

People remain.

Love remains.

Hope remains.

And somewhere within us, quietly waiting for the moment it is needed, there is a strength we may never have known we possessed. Maybe that is what disasters teach us, they don’t only show us how vulnerable life is, they show us how extraordinarily determined life can be.

And after watching Nepal struggle through those terrifying hours of 26 August, I find myself holding on to one thought:

Perhaps life is not measured by how many storms we avoid.

Perhaps it is measured by how fiercely we choose to live, love and help one another when the storm finally comes.