Allisonwritings

No one would expect a valentine’s eve dinner to be particularly phisophical, yet, for some reason, my v-day dinner was just that.  Teddy and I sat in a sea of lovebirds, red balloons, and waiters balancing Italian platters over our heads, yet our minds were stuck on the twisted fate, or chance, of the airline industries recent media-infested roller coaster blitz.  First, there was the hudson river miracle landing.  Barely even an injury, the pilot praised as an all-american hero, and the passengers given another chance at life.  Fixated and fascinated, the media soaked this story up like a sponge, giving viewers a taste of what it’s like for an expected tragedy to end soo well.  Two weeks after this astonishment, people held on to the hero, the miracle, the lives that were saved. 

Then this miracle was harshly overpowered by the tragic news of a small commuter jet crashing into a suburban home in upstate New York.  49 lives lost on the flight, one life lost in the home.  One passenger a widow from the 9/11 attacks.  Everyone prominent people in their community.  Today, the media questions the pilot’s actions…did he have control of the plane? Was the weather to blame?  Could this have all ended differently?    There are no conclusive answers yet. 

What is the hardest for me to grasp, and what brings me back to my first sentence, is, how can something so unusually miraculous proceed something so unusually tragic?  Are we being told anything by these two earily similar dramatic events happening within weeks of one another?  Was this all just purely by chance, or did something bigger and higher have to do with these two events falling into history as they have?  Certainly, there are no right answers, but if anything, the notion of questioning this can be powerful enough.  What are we being told? What are we being shown? 

One thing that can be agreed upon is that often the news surrounds negative events.  So rarely do we have good news!  The war…the recession…disease…tragedy…sadness…oy vey.  So, we held onto our good news for dear life, we held onto our all american pilot who saved 50 lives with their 50 stories to tell!  And boy, did we get a smack in the face when flight 3407 crashed into that small house in Buffalo.  We got a serious reality check that these miracles only happen so often, and that tragedy can happen even more easily. 

The most poignant point made during our shared tasting of a slice of tiramisu: the world is inherently disorderly, with a constant desire to make it orderly.  All we can do is pick up the pieces that fall that are out of our control.  While this is inherently pessimistic, it’s comforting to know that humans are able to adapt so easily, to communicate so well, to question and to challenge and to solve problems.  Some problems are solveable and some problems are just too late to fix, but nothing is predictably good or predictably bad.  All we can strive for is goodness in order, in this chaotic and unpredictable world.