Life: Very Unpredictable!
Tumie Modise | Monday May 4, 2015 16:05
Fast forwarding my life would be the most interesting part, although I am not sure I would have the guts to read until the end. I mean, who wants to find out exactly how their exit would be when they finally bow down from life? But nonetheless, I would want to at least find out where I would be in the next four months at least, just out of curiosity.
The thing that makes life interesting must be its unpredictability. The whole idea of waking up in the morning very broke and possibly going to bed later in the day loaded with cash, would be my ideal perfect day. But unfortunately life isn’t always like that, you get a dose of both the good and the ugly, sometimes, you even get a double dose of each, day after day!
Some months ago some people in Europe, woke up to what they thought was just another normal day, only for the day to later turn into a complete nightmare for them. You see, while most people have several nightmares in life, I only have two. I hope to never encounter a lion alone in some thick bush and I pray I don’t perish in an airplane. It is the latter I am mostly worried about. Not because I fear heights or even death, but only because I would hate to suffer like that. I always prefer window seats on planes and there is a real chance that I would want to take a final peak, moments before the plane hits the ground. I wouldn’t really put that past myself, it is just that the way I am wired up.
So on that day, an airbus left an airport in Spain around 10am for a short scheduled flight which was expected to take just a little under two hours to its destination in Germany. Onboard the plane was one hundred and fifty people (150), including the plane’s six crew members. Among the passengers, we are told, was a group of students returning home from a school trip. I don’t know of anybody who can claim that they never take pride, travelling by air. There is always an air of pride, even of little prestige about it, sometimes you even forget and think you are rich. It is very common for people to capture memories of themselves at airports and most people often share every detail of the trip in the form of pictures on social media. It is a good thing that operating cell phones and even taking pictures mid air is not allowed, because then we would always be seeing images of people hanging out of aircraft windows in mid air, or of some even attempting to get on top of planes in mid air!
Unfortunately for the 149 people on that plane that day, they will never ever get another chance to experience a flight, let alone narrate what really happened on the fateful day, because they all perished. In Botswana, I only know of two people who lost their lives that way and as fate would have it, both of them were my schoolmate’s many years ago. The official version is that one of the pilots locked himself up in the cockpit as the other pilot stepped out momentarily outside the cockpit, before crashing the plane in what is suspected to have been a suicide mission.
Medical experts describe suicide as an act of taking one’s life. They further attribute the act to several factors, which all seem to suggest that, for a person to reach that stage, they would have to be in a state where they feel totally overwhelmed by everything and that they view death as the only way out. Apparently this mindset can be reversed only if there is timely and quick intervention in the form of intense counseling and medication, in order to balance the mind.
But then again, suicide only becomes suicide when the person decides to go alone. On this occasion though, the pilot not only chose his own day and his preferred way of exit, but he also decided it would be cool to take 149 other people with him to St. Peter’s pearly gates. What a near stampede it must have been! Most importantly, assuming we all believe in the afterlife, what a lashing he must have taken at the gates! I know I would have kicked him and even risked being kicked out; I mean what was he even thinking? If only we knew our life books.