Anyone who has flown this last week has had a bit more to think about than usual as they wait to board their flights. Saffie, seen here at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, is waiting to catch her Southwest flight to Midway in Chicago for a connection to New Hampshire. She seems concerned, but will nonetheless board her flight because she has a job to do, and she has faith that she will arrive at her destination safe and sound. In these respects, she is very much like all the others using air transportation. We all trust that the technology and those in control of it will perform as designed and with the utmost level of professionalism to get us to our destinations.
But occasionally and, in the case of air travel, only very, very occasionally, something goes terribly wrong.
You might think that Saffie is nothing like the average air passenger. After all, she is a Poodle. But, in the sense that every passenger on every plane is just along for the ride, and can do nothing to exercise any degree of control over what happens on that plane, are any of us really that different than Saffie?
But of course there are some differences. A really big one is that we can freely communicate with the other passengers. Saffie is somewhat limited in this regard. There was also a Chihuahua on her flight, but I am not certain how much they were able to converse. Saffie was flying with her human companion, of course, and this is her greatest comfort. Dogs are, after all, pack animals and dogs sense intuitively that there is safety in numbers. Even a pack of two is better than being alone. Yet, last week, one person aboard all the thousands of planes flying all over the world, was more alone than most of us are probably even capable of imagining. A person so alone that the very darkest manifestation of alienation, and probably fear, could be made real and seem, in the moment, to make perfect sense.
The crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 would have been a tragedy had its only victim been the 28-year old who directed the plane to fly into a mountain. But he chose to take another 149 people to their deaths along with him. The tragedy is multiplied, not just 149 times, but untold thousands of times, as the ripples of family and friendships are washed over in waves of grief and despondency.
How does something like this happen?
In this case, I think a good guess is that the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, had no one in whom he felt he could confide. He was facing his worst fear, of losing the job he had worked his entire life to attain, alone. Had he been able to share what he was experiencing with even one other person, I cannot help but think he would not have felt the need to take 149 other people with him into that mountain. And, hopefully, he would have decided not to go there himself. Of course, I could be wrong. It is clear the degree of mental instability being experienced by Herr Lubitz far eclipsed what we would call, "depression." Many people are depressed, yet there are fortunately very few incidents of mass murder being committed.
But what we do have, in numbers increasing worldwide, are suicides. The World Health Organization estimates there will be about one million suicides worldwide this year. That is a rate of about one every 40 seconds. But if nothing is done to change the current increase in the rate of suicide, by the year 2020, there will be one suicide every 20 seconds. Let me rephrase, the rate of suicide will double in the next five years if nothing is done to change the circumstances driving these actions.
Even with the current number, many people reading this diary have already been touched by the suicide of a family member or friend. My family has.
Now imagine a world where it happens twice as often as it does today.
If anyone reading this, anywhere in the world, feels they are facing some problem which seems insurmountable, and that there is no one who cares, I want to tell you that you are wrong. First, you are mistaken in thinking that no one cares, because there are many who do. And, second, you are very, very likely wrong that your problem is insurmountable. I am not saying there is necessarily some easy answer, but I am saying that you probably are not in a position to be able to accurately assess all the possible options available to you.
If there is no friend or family member in whom you can confide, anywhere in the world, this is a resource which you can use to find someone who can help
http://www.befrienders.org
Please, explore the many options available before doing something you cannot change.
To those of us fortunate to be feeling good about the way our lives are going -- if you see someone who seems like they may be struggling, please reach out to them to see if there is something you can do. It can be as simple as just talking to them for a while, going out for coffee, or for a walk.
Let them know they are not alone.
Let them know someone cares.
Sometimes the smallest action can have an impact larger than you will ever know.
Saffie is safe at home. She has now flown coast-to-coast four times. If she ever needs to fly again, let's hope she doesn't have as much to think about as on this trip.
Let's hope no one ever does, again.