Life Changing Moments

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Bevo Incognito

5,000+ Posts
I was reading the story of Paul Twaragowski this morning:


The Link


He was supposed to be on the flight that went down a couple of nights ago in Buffalo, New York, but his connecting flight was late so he missed it. He received many frantic phone calls/text messages from friends and family members, panicking because they thought that he was actually on the flight that went down.

My question is: how do you think this might impact him going forward, and how would it impact you? If you realized that, had mere chance not forced you to deviate from your planned course of action and had that mere chance not saved you from certain death, do you think it would change your approach to life and the things that you did in the future?
 
I don't know. I can't imagine how he feels, knowing that pure luck saved him from the plane crash. And he was probably pissed off that he missed his connection.

He very well could never fly again, because the risk hit a little too close to home.

But we risk death or substantial injury every time we walk out the door.
 
I would guess that it depends on your age, but more importantly, your emotional and intellectual maturity.

I think it would have the most impact if you were younger.

It would have the most impact on the evolution of your maturation.

As you get older, (or to be more precise, more mature), you not only begin to realize how much each new day is a miracle, (even without a near death experience), but most of your ego, (in the Freudian sense), is already set. [Three sets of parentheses in one sentence; that might be a new record for me!]




Ah, I love the smell of Sunday mornings!






wink.gif
 
Someone I know from an e-group worked late the night of Sept 10th 2001, and planned to go into work late the next morning. His office was above the crash line in one of the WTC towers. He awoke the next morning to similar phone and text messages, then got up and to look out his window and see the towers in flames.

I agree with the previous poster that the scope of the effect is most likely tied to your age/maturity. As someone eligible for an AARP card, I think its influence on my daily life would be subtle. I doubt it would keep me from flying or anything like that. Would it make me rethink some priorities - probably yes, but make drastic changes, probably not. If I were younger (this guy was only 23) it might shake me up a bit more. But then again - I have seen too many young kids touched by something like this - say a close friend killed by a drunk driver - and it does not change their activities or priorities at all. They are invincible.

As another mentioned - we take risks daily and probably have more near misses than we actually know about. It is a part of living.
 
I am so shallow that I would probably be thankful I missed the flight and go on with life no much thinking about it again, except when brought up on social occasions.
 
of course, in the case of this man and the flight, we can see the luck/chance right in front of us. But how much does chance/luck play in our lives every day. You can trace back any traumatic or joyous thing that has happened to you and say, well if this past thing hadn't happened, then this current thing wouldn't have happened.

If i had gotten that "dream job" in Chicago 10 years ago, i wouldn't have been married to my wife right now because i wouldn't have been in Austin to have met her 5 years ago.

Maybe my "dream job Chicago self" (if it had happened) would have stepped off a street corner in Chicago 5 years later and gotten hit by a bus. And because i had gotten that dream job, i was there in that city to get hit by that bus and not in Austin meeting my future wife.

It will drive you crazy if you imagine all the alternate lives you could be or not be leading when you look at all the chance moments that have occured in your life.

Just be thankful and move on.
 
I've heard of a lot of people have trouble with this, in terms of "Why not me?"

Seems to me that the more philosophical you are, the more of an issue it would be.
 
Is it possible if he would have gotten on the plane, it could have somehow triggered some event that caused the pilots to fly the plane somewhat differently that would have avoided the crash all together?
 
I don't see how it is any different than surviving the car going 70 mph in the opposite direction on a two-lane blacktop which passes your car going 70 mph and does not swerve into your lane and kill you. This happens every day.
 
i used to drink online with my boss. every now and then we'd start thinking about life. i came up with this conclusion. everything we do, we have two decisions (not all conscious decisions or hard thought out ie - Should i go to the store now or later?). go left or go right. and those thousands of decisions put you where you are right now and will put you where you'll be in 10 yrs.

that said, my wife is a big "what if... " in talking about anything from our past to our future. my answer to that is you never know what you would do/say until you're in that position (unless i want to avoid an argument, then i tell her what she wants to hear).
 
Life is fleeting:

transience

noun
1. an impermanence that suggests the inevitability of ending or dying
2. the attribute of being brief or fleeting [syn: brevity]

WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.
Cite This Source

You have to work at it to make it to old age. And even then who knows what will figuratively IED you as you walk buy through the trials and tribulations of life. Pay attention, or just be late more. Pre-select when being late will have the most-advantageous results as in the example of the original post.

Holy crap what a lucky bastard.
 
I saw a documentary about lottery winners a while back. One guy won over 100 million and lives it up down in Florida. That was pure luck. He said that after a few months he made plans to go to New York to meet with an investment company. The day that he was going to leave he got sick and missed the flight to NY. Turns out that his meeting was on the morning of Sept 11 and was with one of the investment companies in the World Trade Center where one of the planes made a direct hit. Luck or fate, this guy had a couple of huge life changing events.
 
iirc, a widow who's husband died in one of the twin towers was on that buffalo flight that crashed. life is harsh and unapologetic. but at the same time, it gives you small moments of joy every day. you just have to be wise enough to notice and cherish them.

i truly believe that every decision you make is half chance. no decision is made in a vacuum. there are a number of events of your doing and most not of your doing that leads you to every choice you make every minute of the every day.

as i get older, i stop asking why things happen the way they do. some, as i do, see it as chance. others see it as fate. life is like a giant river. we are all floating on tubes on that river. we all randomly float down that long winding river together, some of us bumping into each other, most of us don't. sometimes, we drift into a stagnant eddy and go nowhere. sometimes, we ride over some rewarding and thrilling white water. other times, we are lost in endless and treacherous rapids. but we all float to the giant water fall at the end of the river. some get there faster than others. some have a more bumpy ride. so are blessed with tranquil rapids.

regardless of how you see life, the message is clear. enjoy the present. there may be no tomorrow.

with that said, i think the guy just experienced a very "lucky" wake up call from life. i think he'll see things a bit differently for some time. the troubles in his life don't seem quite so troublesome.
 
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