Life [can be] Short

There have been a couple of plane crashes in the news recently, which has gotten me thinking.  I think one of the reasons that plane crashes are horrifying is that they don’t happen very often, so they are news, which means there are graphic pictures in front of us.  Another possible reason we find plane crashes scary is I feel like we, or maybe it’s just me, when hearing about a plane crash, put ourselves mentally on that plane as it goes down.  We relive the crash in our mind, wondering what our final moments would have been like, or if there were survivors, would we have been one of them.

I’m not a nervous flyer.  At least not nervous about dying in a crash.  Nervous about having my 6’4” frame jammed in a seat next to an obnoxious traveler for a 16-hour flight… maybe.  The thing is, I’ve actually been in a plane crash, and obviously lived to tell the story.  The story is in my book, and it fundamentally changed my perspective on life.  Admittedly, it was a small plane, not a commercial flight, but I think the lesson is applicable regardless.

Most of us probably go through life thinking it will continue on pretty much as before.  We understand that life changes, we get older, maybe marry and have kids, change jobs, etc.  But day to day, week to week, we kind of assume it will go on forever.  We don’t think, as we get out of bed, or board a plane, “Whoa, this is my last day on earth.”  For people on those planes last week, life came to a sudden, unexpected end.

I have a couple of friends right now facing an unexpected end to life via a terminal cancer diagnosis.  Their end isn’t ‘sudden’, as in ‘minutes to impact’, but their change in understanding of how much time they have left was certainly sudden.  And finding out you have a year left, when you thought you had 20-30 years left, is still a drastic reduction.  Just like that could have been us on one of those planes, it could be us one day getting that terminal diagnosis.  

How then should we live?  It’s certainly prudent to make plans for the future, so life doesn’t pass us by, and we are in a position to take advantage of opportunities.  By the same token, it’s good to remain open to unplanned twists.  As I write about in my book, a huge amount of the good in my present life came from a couple of very small plot twists along the way.

In the first minutes after our crash landing, since I regained consciousness first, I thought I was the sole survivor.  The other passengers eventually came to, except for the pilot, who was killed on impact.  The pilot had only been married 6 months.  When he said goodbye to his new wife as he left for this trip, he had no idea it would be his final goodbye.  

I know that for me, being in that crash meant that I didn’t take for granted any more that I would be returning at the end of that day.  I certainly hoped so, but I had come face to face with the reality that the future is not guaranteed in this life.  So I started telling Francie that I loved her before I left the house in the morning.  Since I was typically leaving at 5 am, it meant waking her with a kiss to the cheek to mumble that I loved her, before she rolled over and went back to sleep.

And yes, in the 28 years since, I’ve gotten sloppy.  But these last few crashes have reminded me that life can end unexpectedly.  I’ve resumed telling Francie I love her when I leave the house.  It’s just not quite as early these days.