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| Wednesday, October 11, 2006 |
| Perspective |
When the news spread through my Manhattan office this afternoon that a plane had hit a building on the Upper East Side, the first reaction was shock. We all went to CNN, MSNBC, NYT.com, any possible news outlet we could find. You could almost feel a collective sigh of relief when it became apparent that this was a small plane. I immediately felt guilty for thinking that. People's lives had still been lost. We still didn't know how many. But in the times we live in, you automatically worry.
I immediately called my mother to let her know I was ok. She hadn't heard the news, and thank God, because if she had I would have gotten a frantic phone call. After reassuring her that yes, I was fine, no seriously I was alright. Really, mom, I'm like 7 miles away from the crash, I was allowed off the phone. I texted a friend who lives near the crash, was assured that she and her husband were fine, and continued hitting refresh on the three news sites I had open while continuing to try to get some work done.
And then the news came that a member of the Yankees had been flying the plane. The rest of the world found out the same way Cory Lidle's father did - through the media. His wife was apparently met at the airport by a priest as she disembarked from a cross country flight. The entire world knew her husband, the father of her child, was dead before she did. Somehow, because Lidle was a public figure, it made the crash all the worse. Because the media knew and knows so much about him. This would have been a terrible tragedy regardless of who perished, but somehow this makes it more personal.
I can't imagine what the Lidle family is going through, but I wish them comfort and strength in what must be an amazingly difficult time. In the coming days and weeks I am sure there will be hundreds of thousands of TV segments, articles, blog posts, retrospectives created about Lidle's life. There are plenty of things that angered me about today's coverage; the way the media kept mentioning that the government had said it was an accident, but hey, that's what they said in the moments after 9/11 too!, the fact that for some reason the fact that the apartments that were hit were valued at at least a million dollars, as if the people who were in them were somehow more or less valuable because of the price of their homes, I could keep going but I won't.
But what the events of this afternoon made me remember is that life can be way too short. Lidle died doing what, by all accounts, he had a passion for. When my time comes, I hope I can say the same.Labels: misc. |
posted by FINY @ Wednesday, October 11, 2006   |
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| 1 Comments: |
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As soon as I heard about this, I thought of you. I'm so glad that you and your friends are safe.
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As soon as I heard about this, I thought of you. I'm so glad that you and your friends are safe.