I was very moved by a post today by Ben Schlappig (aka Lucky) over at One Mile at a Time. He spoke to a guy in a queue at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. The guy was flying on MH 17 which came down whilst flying over the Ukraine.
Its a very powerful post.
It made me reflect how close we come sometimes to the edge of life? How many contacts do we have with people who we never know their futures? I was releived to get a text back from one of my friends who is a cabin crew memeber of Malaysia Airlines to say he is okay. We observed this is the second time this year, he has had to reassure friends and family that he is okay.
Lets treat each other with care today. We never know whats in store.
Why not ALWAYS treat each other with care?
No argument from me on that one Mike!
I have to really disagree with you here. I found Ben’s post to be completely selfish. He took a tragedy and completely turned it around into a story about himself. Who the heck cares if he spoke to one of the victim’s at the airport. The focus in this difficult time should be on the victims not Ben’s experience. It is almost as if he is bragging about his surreal experience. In times such as this one it is better to offer your condolences and leave it at that.
Thank you J – I was hoping I wasn’t alone in my thoughts regarding Lucky’s narcissistic comments – apparently I am not.
I wasn’t as bothered by his comments as some of the other ones. At least he had SOMETHING novel to say. I was kind of sad to open up Boarding Area and Prior2Boarding to find tons of posts about the same thing.
I liked the way that Mommy Points handled it – didn’t make a special post about it – just a brief mention of the tragedy at the top of her post.
For me, writing a blog post about it would have felt like I was trying to drive traffic to my site and profit off of a tragedy (not saying that’s what you or anyone else was doing – just my thoughts). I retweeted the breaking news from CNN just in case anyone hadn’t heard and that felt “right” for me.
I feel so awful for all those with loved ones on the flight or otherwise affected
J & JohnSD – I respect your opinions on how you interpreted it but I guess I can’t agree on calling it narcissistic or selfish. There were plenty of details of his personal experience that day which is where I get you might think he’s making it about himself. But in the end, I found the fact he spoke to someone that was on the plane to be a detail worth sharing to his readers. You can’t help but wonder how you’d feel in the same situation. It’s eerie or chilling or whatever word you want to use. I don’t know Lucky personally (or any blogger at BoardingArea for that matter) but I have to give him the benefit of the doubt that he was just giving insight to his readers on how he was impacted differently than the rest of us. I felt he gave adequate condolences and respect to those lost.
so even if he is “selfish” – which I dont think, what’s wrong with saying what is on your mind and you believe in it? this culture has so much hypocrisy… “being sensitive”, “politically correct”, “non-offensive”… where is the honesty you teach your kids? when you go to bed at night can you sleep with those facade in your mind?