Columbia: As bad as it is, yet...
Feb. 3rd, 2003 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolphins_logYes, it's horrible. Yes, it's tragic. But it's not as shocking as Challenger was. I am not belittling the crash. I don't want to get polarized into the extreme. Don't get me wrong, I actually took pride... I take pride, in Columbia. I watched her first launch. I watched her second. After the crash I went about he house looking for all of the "Columbia" references I could find, all that I could think of. I thought for a minute that the wallpaper at work [the icon picture you see with this post] was Columbia. It's not. It's Atlantis. Juli and I saw the Imax "Hail Columbia", a very awe inspiring film, and we have a poster from it. We should get it framed. Columbia makes a dramatic appearance in "Cowboy Bebop". I'm glad I have these things.
There's a tendency sometimes for some people to want to feel dark and gloomy, lugubrious. I can't. I've got too much going on to weigh myself down. Selfish? In the light of what happened to Columbia? Perhaps. Do I mourn? Sure! But I think I've turned up the sympathy and turned down the empathy.
Earl Nightingale said "Luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparedness". He said that in reference to "good things happening to lucky people". I've always said that good and bad happen in equal amounts, and what a person focuses on is what they experience the most. In a sense I guess it is what they prepare themselves for. I speculate that if a person is simply prepared, or let's call it "being aware" of life and things around you, then when the problems, or even the disasters, happen it's easier to deal with, to survive. It's the people who "do" survive that have to deal with the disasters. As sad as it is, those who don't survive don't have to worry about it. It's us. We have to put it back together, to "find the problem, fix it, and move on" as NASA has been saying.
There are many examples of people who've been hit with tragedy and have had their "Finest Hour" afterwords. there are many stories of athletes who make tremendous comebacks after being faced with certain disaster. Lance Armstrong beat cancer and went on to win the Tour de France, what? five times now? I think they've taken to calling it the Tour de Lance. It's stories like that which prove the point over and over.
I suppose that being ready for "opportunity meeting preparedness" has a beneficial flip side; being ready for "tragedy meeting preparedness". I heard in the news reports that NASA had contingencies set up for this sort of disaster, and hoped that they would never have to use them. They got prepared, and being prepared they could put the possibility behind them and press on. We could learn from that. We can just be prepared come what may, make sure that we're able to see our way through the gloom. After we've been through it we're better for it. I don't mean earthquake kits, bomb shelters and Y2K supplies. Those are paranoid preparations. I mean to stay focused and not get bogged down in feeling blue. I'm going to stick "lugubrious" in here again. I think it's a fun word. It just rolls off the tongue. "Lugubrious". Exaggerated gloominess. The trick is to be prepared to deal with both good and bad. To focus on the good and deal with the bad, look for the diamonds in everything. I'm reminded of the story about the little girl digging through the horse manure. "There's gotta be a pony in here somewhere!"
Here's a great example of what I'm saying. In dealing with shuttle news I'm staying focused on NASA's goal to "find it, fix it, and move on". Now I'm starting to hear stories about memos that are surfacing, memos for months back, stating fears about safety and reliability of the shuttles. I've seen memos like this after every major disaster. They popped up when the Hood Canal Bridge sank in 1979. I'm even guilty of jumping on them and quoting them myself. I think some memos popped up after 9/11. There are so many people generating so many ideas and feeding these memos that I'm sure the memos are propagating themselves, making sure every contingency is covered. If our house fell down tonight a memo would pop up tomorrow saying it would happen. The memos no longer mean anything to me. They are unimportant in my sphere of influence. That is to say, for me, they are not newsworthy.
No. I can honestly say I'm not as shocked by Columbia as I was by Challenger. Perhaps I've grown a lot since then. Maybe the world has grown up. I'm saddened. Certainly I honor those lost. I'm also confident that our space program can move on. And in the same sense I feel I can learn something from this tragedy, perhaps by just observing myself.
There's a tendency sometimes for some people to want to feel dark and gloomy, lugubrious. I can't. I've got too much going on to weigh myself down. Selfish? In the light of what happened to Columbia? Perhaps. Do I mourn? Sure! But I think I've turned up the sympathy and turned down the empathy.
Earl Nightingale said "Luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparedness". He said that in reference to "good things happening to lucky people". I've always said that good and bad happen in equal amounts, and what a person focuses on is what they experience the most. In a sense I guess it is what they prepare themselves for. I speculate that if a person is simply prepared, or let's call it "being aware" of life and things around you, then when the problems, or even the disasters, happen it's easier to deal with, to survive. It's the people who "do" survive that have to deal with the disasters. As sad as it is, those who don't survive don't have to worry about it. It's us. We have to put it back together, to "find the problem, fix it, and move on" as NASA has been saying.
There are many examples of people who've been hit with tragedy and have had their "Finest Hour" afterwords. there are many stories of athletes who make tremendous comebacks after being faced with certain disaster. Lance Armstrong beat cancer and went on to win the Tour de France, what? five times now? I think they've taken to calling it the Tour de Lance. It's stories like that which prove the point over and over.
I suppose that being ready for "opportunity meeting preparedness" has a beneficial flip side; being ready for "tragedy meeting preparedness". I heard in the news reports that NASA had contingencies set up for this sort of disaster, and hoped that they would never have to use them. They got prepared, and being prepared they could put the possibility behind them and press on. We could learn from that. We can just be prepared come what may, make sure that we're able to see our way through the gloom. After we've been through it we're better for it. I don't mean earthquake kits, bomb shelters and Y2K supplies. Those are paranoid preparations. I mean to stay focused and not get bogged down in feeling blue. I'm going to stick "lugubrious" in here again. I think it's a fun word. It just rolls off the tongue. "Lugubrious". Exaggerated gloominess. The trick is to be prepared to deal with both good and bad. To focus on the good and deal with the bad, look for the diamonds in everything. I'm reminded of the story about the little girl digging through the horse manure. "There's gotta be a pony in here somewhere!"
Here's a great example of what I'm saying. In dealing with shuttle news I'm staying focused on NASA's goal to "find it, fix it, and move on". Now I'm starting to hear stories about memos that are surfacing, memos for months back, stating fears about safety and reliability of the shuttles. I've seen memos like this after every major disaster. They popped up when the Hood Canal Bridge sank in 1979. I'm even guilty of jumping on them and quoting them myself. I think some memos popped up after 9/11. There are so many people generating so many ideas and feeding these memos that I'm sure the memos are propagating themselves, making sure every contingency is covered. If our house fell down tonight a memo would pop up tomorrow saying it would happen. The memos no longer mean anything to me. They are unimportant in my sphere of influence. That is to say, for me, they are not newsworthy.
No. I can honestly say I'm not as shocked by Columbia as I was by Challenger. Perhaps I've grown a lot since then. Maybe the world has grown up. I'm saddened. Certainly I honor those lost. I'm also confident that our space program can move on. And in the same sense I feel I can learn something from this tragedy, perhaps by just observing myself.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
::sighs::
Date: 2003-02-04 10:49 am (UTC)It was very sad. I am glad you have good memories, proud ones, to fall back on.