Feb. 3, 2026

You Have Three Minutes to Live – What Do You Do?

What does resilience look like when the future shrinks to three minutes?

A witness to the siege of Sarajevo shares how survival became a daily decision shaped by loss, instinct, and human connection under constant threat.

🧠 What you will learn:

How extreme loss can create calm in moments of danger
Why survival depends on community, not isolation
How art, humor, and culture regulate fear during crisis
What real resilience looks like when choice and time disappear

🗝️ Key takeaways:

Fear lives in the body, but meaning steadies the mind
Belonging turns survival into purpose
Culture is not a luxury in crisis; it is oxygen

Listen now to this powerful conversation on resilience, war, and the bonds that keep people alive.

Watch on YouTube or subscribe to YoggNation’s Spirit of Gratitude podcast for stories that show how humanity endures when everything else falls away.

00:00 - Counting Close Calls

00:41 - Life Measured In Minutes

01:49 - Present Tense Survival

02:34 - Fearlessness After Loss

03:20 - Crossing Sniper Streets

04:11 - Choosing To Stay

04:24 - From Aid To Relationships

05:01 - Laughter Amid Ruins

05:37 - Underground Culture Thrives

06:04 - Humor As A Lifeline

06:32 - Stories The News Missed

WEBVTT

00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:07.759
What was the exact count of how many times you dodged sniper fire, grenades, shellings during your time?

00:00:08.080 --> 00:00:11.199
Oh, well, that would be an impossible number to estimate.

00:00:11.359 --> 00:00:28.239
Um, I mean, you know, the the truth is at that time in 1993, 94, in 95, um, there was a few times of let's call it uh peace, not peace, but um quiet.

00:00:29.039 --> 00:00:30.960
But otherwise, it was a daily thing.

00:00:31.039 --> 00:00:38.560
I mean, you're you're you know, there's a saying in Serewa, your life's lasting three, four minutes, depends on where who you are and where you are.

00:00:38.719 --> 00:00:41.359
But so wait, one more time?

00:00:41.600 --> 00:00:52.799
Yeah, there I mean you your your life is you, you know, there's no in a place like Sarajevo that's trapped, surrounded for four years, no electricity, no gas, no water, at least like constant supply.

00:00:52.880 --> 00:00:54.479
You had to kind of figure this out.

00:00:54.719 --> 00:00:58.560
Is there's no past, there's no the past is gone.

00:00:58.799 --> 00:01:01.039
They wiped it out, it's been wiped out.

00:01:01.200 --> 00:01:06.400
There's no future because it's so the future is three minutes and you're gonna die.

00:01:06.560 --> 00:01:13.519
Like, you know, because wherever you are, the moment you leave that place, you're susceptible to a sniper or a grenade.

00:01:13.920 --> 00:01:16.159
So you only have the present.

00:01:16.480 --> 00:01:27.120
So how many times you how many times I personally survived a sniper or a bomb or a shrapnel, I cannot count.

00:01:27.280 --> 00:01:39.920
I can kind of count how many times my friends, my Bosnian friends, think I died in cat lives, because they told me, which is eight, which we all know we only have nine.

00:01:40.159 --> 00:01:43.359
So um, you know, I'm kind of hanging on by thread.

00:01:43.519 --> 00:01:47.920
Well, I think I happen to believe that it was your survival instincts that kept you alive.

00:01:48.239 --> 00:01:49.040
That is true.

00:01:49.200 --> 00:01:52.079
Uh, but they're kind of it's kind of a mixed bag.

00:01:53.120 --> 00:01:57.519
Um I think you're kind of alluding to something, you know, my past.

00:01:57.680 --> 00:01:59.040
But that too, yes.

00:01:59.280 --> 00:02:04.799
That's difficult to explain about um war.

00:02:05.920 --> 00:02:08.639
And and it's hard for me to really figure it all out.

00:02:08.800 --> 00:02:26.319
But when I was there, when I arrived, because of my past, because of what happened to me in losing Karina, who was the love of my life at that time, I intuits are a very fearless and wounded human being.

00:02:26.560 --> 00:02:31.759
Fearless meaning I didn't dying wasn't something I was really afraid of.

00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:33.919
Um, I wasn't looking for it.

00:02:34.319 --> 00:02:36.000
Why weren't you afraid?

00:02:36.159 --> 00:02:40.080
Is it because it was an everyday thing that your body chemistry got used to?

00:02:40.319 --> 00:02:58.479
No, I wasn't afraid of dying if dying was something that might uh I was very in a metaphysical place with trying to find out where I could find Karina in like you know, the heavens or wherever wherever they wherever that person might exist in the other plane.

00:02:59.280 --> 00:03:07.759
And so dying wasn't really I mean, I always had a primal fear of dying, you can't avoid that, but it wasn't intellectual.

00:03:08.000 --> 00:03:17.680
Um, it was um so what I'm trying to get at is if I were to run across the street, which is a known sniper street, I was just gonna go for it.

00:03:17.759 --> 00:03:20.560
I wasn't um I was scared.

00:03:20.639 --> 00:03:25.199
There's a primal party that kicks in, but um, you're gonna breathe heavy, you're gonna freak out.

00:03:25.520 --> 00:03:33.039
But um, I was gonna do it because that the other side of that street would have been friends, I'm going to I needed to keep living.

00:03:33.199 --> 00:03:35.039
I need it was part of my own existence.

00:03:35.120 --> 00:03:38.719
I need to keep living on a minute-by-minute basis.

00:03:38.960 --> 00:03:50.960
So um my survival skills were a little bit of fearlessness and um a very, very large desire to figure out how to keep living.

00:03:51.039 --> 00:03:56.000
And uh that here's the thing the Bosnians, that's a place where you want to get out of.

00:03:56.240 --> 00:04:00.479
Like it's not a when I got you want to leave if you're saying.

00:04:00.960 --> 00:04:03.360
Um, and I did want to leave after about three weeks.

00:04:03.439 --> 00:04:03.919
I wanted to leave.

00:04:04.080 --> 00:04:05.599
Two, three weeks, I was like, I'm leaving.

00:04:05.680 --> 00:04:07.599
This, I'm you're just watching people die.

00:04:08.159 --> 00:04:11.919
And um, what happened is I met uh people.

00:04:12.240 --> 00:04:17.839
I for the first when you deliver food, you're kind of a little bit, you pass it on and then you move on, right?

00:04:17.920 --> 00:04:19.199
You're passing it and you move on.

00:04:19.360 --> 00:04:23.439
There's emotions there, there's empathy, but it's almost worse.

00:04:24.399 --> 00:04:39.439
Meeting people, like they invite you to their home, which is down a cave and down a tunnel, and through when you meet people, that's when I was deeply in trouble because I was falling kind of in love with people.

00:04:40.319 --> 00:04:50.480
And then you can't leave because it's like, how do you leave people that you think you might have just a smidget of chance of helping a little bit the next day?

00:04:50.720 --> 00:04:51.680
How do you leave?

00:04:51.839 --> 00:05:00.560
It's it's uh, you know, it's it's it's impossible, um, unless you're gonna go do something outside to bring more in or to figure out more.

00:05:00.720 --> 00:05:06.560
So I got really involved with a lot of people that were very inspiring, not because they did anything magical.

00:05:06.720 --> 00:05:20.399
They weren't doing anything magical, but they were uh together with their families, they were laughing, they were telling me stories, they were like picking spring onions out amidst all this chaos and war and death.

00:05:20.639 --> 00:05:21.759
Yeah, I mean, totally.

00:05:21.920 --> 00:05:37.199
I mean, we're being shot at in the room we're talking to, and we and but they'd laugh, and then we'd cut up a spring onion and eat it for food, and then we'd I stayed it for six hours, and I go back to where I was sleeping, which is on a burned out floor and the seventh floor of this big burned-out building.

00:05:37.519 --> 00:05:45.120
And I just met started to meet more and more of these people, and then I started to go into underground discos, and then it really, really took off.

00:05:45.279 --> 00:05:47.920
I exploded in my in me.

00:05:48.480 --> 00:05:53.120
Like this art and this culture was thriving.

00:05:53.279 --> 00:05:59.519
It wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't like minimal, it was thriving in the underground world.

00:05:59.680 --> 00:06:04.079
Yeah, underground, like unlike literally you going down like through stairs.

00:06:04.399 --> 00:06:10.720
And that is where I realized, okay, delivering food is important.

00:06:11.839 --> 00:06:29.759
But what these people really wanted you to know, and no one knows, is that they are incredibly sophisticated, intelligent, artistic human beings who and the most important thing about war to keep you alive is humor.

00:06:30.240 --> 00:06:32.319
And they had a great sense of humor.

00:06:32.639 --> 00:06:38.879
And um, but if you watch the news, you didn't see any of those people, you never saw those people.