With the morning came tragic news: The disappearance of Air France flight 447.
Passenger count: 228.
Two Hundred Twenty Eight.
That is a lot of beautiful lives.
For some reason I get deeply affected by plane disasters. I cried and trembled in front of the TV watching the USAir rescue in the Hudson River. Sleep alluded me as I thought about the last moments of the passengers and crew on the flight that crashed outside of Buffalo. And today, I have a heavy heart as I think of the human life lost on this flight. The amazing human stories of love, sorrow, joy, heartache and celebration. The innocence of the children. The wisdom of the aged. The stress of the businessman. The excitement of the vacationer. All 228 had stories to tell. Stories of the human experience, stories that were uniquely theirs, the telling of their one wild and precious life.*
Those lives are over. Just like that. I imagine that not one guessed it was their last day on earth. But I hope there were some who loved that last day. I hope some of them delighted in the ice cream cone they ate before they boarded; were thankful for the upgrade; told their mothers they loved her; really took in the heat of the shower as the water cleansed them; enjoyed the beauty of the flower they saw on their walk; ordered the cream soup AND dessert. I hope they each did something in their last day to love their life.
I ask you, dear reader: How will you love your life today? Leave a note in the comments, that we all may benefit from your love of today's life. After all, today, this very moment of this very day, is all we ever have.
* From the poem by Mary Oliver:
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down,
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
