Fear The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Striking The Balance

Fear the Walking Dead season 7, episode 14

Who you are vs. who you want to be

The climax of this week’s episode was, after spending nearly the entire episode on the same page and seemingly having reconciled, a battle between Alicia and Strand on top of the roof of the tower.

It all began after Strand realized that because he killed Wes (ostensibly to stop him from killing Alicia), Alicia would never forgive him. So, he opted to leave the beacon on, potentially condemning the rest of Alicia and Morgan’s group to death at the hands of Strand irradiated moat of walkers.

While this was a fight between Strand and Alicia, it also represented a fight between the person Strand was and the person he wanted to be. He wanted to be someone Alicia admired, someone she loved, but ultimately, the person he was, who would kill Wes without really thinking about it, won out.

Now, this one is a teensy bit subjective, as what one wants to be varies from person to person, and the difference between what someone wants to be and what they’re like is equally varied. One person might be perfectly happy with who they are even as the apocalypse sets in and doesn’t feel the need for improvement. In contrast, another person may have extremely high standards for themselves, which they may never feel they’ve achieved.

In general, I think everyone should ask what they seek to improve in themselves and why. I’m not going to bother talking about setting bars for said improvements; while physical improvement can be quantified, moral, ethical, and psychological ones are far more difficult to nail down. I can say that you should strive every day to get better and not let whatever negative elements you might have drag you down or convince you that your efforts are pointless.

The balance here is different than in the others we’ve covered because if you feel you need to improve, then you don’t want to go back, but, especially with things that are less quantifiable, I’m not sure you can ever get to the other extreme — It’s not like a switch in your head that says “On” or “Off,” that lets you know when you’ve hit it — just keep trying to get as close as you can without falling back.

And that’s our Walking Dead Survival Rule Of The Week! There’s a vast difference between the way things are now and how they’ll be in a zombie apocalypse. If you don’t change with the apocalypse, you probably won’t last long, but if you let it change you too much, you may become something you don’t want to be. You have to strike a balance between these two extremes. If you want to learn how to strike that balance and survive, why not pick up a copy of my book, The Rules: A Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse! You can also get it at Amazon here, on iTunes here!