Life should not be a calm and quiet journey from birth to grave. Life should be a rollercoaster that slides into the end – martini in one hand, chocolate in the other screaming “MAN! What a ride!”
Sitting in the showroom this morning, with a handful of crew and a smattering of guests, there was one thought that ruffled through the air like a butterfly…though only a few of us voiced it. Very quietly, as though afraid of the implications.
It could have been us. It could have been our tour. Our plane. Our guests.
It could have been us.
So very easily it could have been us.
It wasn’t my ship that lost 8 guests yesterday afternoon; but it may as well have been. When something like this happens, it doesn’t just ripple through the fleet, it ripples – I imagine – through every fleet. A stark reminder that things can happen out here, things do happen out here, and that you simply cannot plan for something like that. You can’t turn back the clock and tell that family not to get on that plane, you can’t tell that pilot to hug his wife extra tight.
So where does that leave you? Where does that leave any of us?
It leaves us with the choice to look forward or back.
I am not a religious person in the traditional sense, but I do believe it to be true that every living being on this earth “walks in the valley of the shadow of death” every day…and that we need not be afraid. Not for any religious or spiritual reason, not because we are being watched or guided (though I don’t necessarily disbelieve that either), but because we have a choice as to whether or not we let that fact affect us. When something like this happens we can choose to close the door in the world in fear or we can grieve, and choose otherwise.
We have the chance to step onto this incredible ride, to take this amazing adventure where nothing is predictable; a ride that’s full of zigs and zags and corkscrew turns, that pulls negative G’s and turns your stomach upside down. We all have that chance, no matter what we do – whether you’re out here drifting on Mama Ocean like me, or whether you’re sitting behind double protected glass in a high rise office. We all have that choice. Make the right one. Yes, things can happen, yes things will happen, and one day – whenever that is – the other side of the veil is waiting for us all. But for so many of us, that day is not today; so cherish that.
Someday, we will all, every one of us one day, play the losing card…that’s a fact of life. Simple biology…until then? Enjoy the game.
Do all those crazy things that you never thought you had the time or the money to do, take your loved ones to dinner, bungee jump off a perfectly good building, sit by a fresh water stream and stare at the fish – whatever it is that you need to do. Yes, you could get hurt, yes, there’s always danger…but you could just as easily get hurt crossing the street as you could go up in a float plane and never come back. Tragedy should not make you want to wrap yourself in bubblewrap…it shouldn’t make you reckless either – but living life without enjoying the ride isn’t actually living…
If only because…it could have been you.