Some mornings make you think about life, more deeply. This morning is one of them.
Entitled “Newlyweds die in copter crash after leaving wedding venue,” the tragedy is how brief their lives together were.
“Mr Will Byler and Ms Bailee Ackerman, both 23 and final-year students at Sam Houston State University, had married at Mr Byler’s family ranch.”
One was pursuing agricultural engineering and he belonged to the school’s rodeo team, and the other was studying agricultural communication. The helicopter pilot was a private commercial pilot, Mr Gerald Lawrence, 76, and he worked for the groom’s father.
A friend of the couple posted this: “We celebrate their fairy-tale wedding and they were surrounded by their family and friends as they flew off in the family helicopter. Sadly they crashed into the side of the hill about a mile (1.6 km) from the family ranch. The pilot, Jerry, was also on board. There were no survivors! Please keep everyone associated with this tragic event in prayers.”
Many have offered their peace and tribute to the couple. The maid of honour, Ms Jessica Stilley, wrote this: “I’m so sad to even be captioning these pictures with this, but you know I just have to share with everyone how beautiful you looked on your wedding day like I normally would have.”
Jessica added: “I’m so happy you married the man of your dreams and found the precious love you deserved with him.”
Another friend said: “I have peace in the fact that you left this earth so full of happiness and love...Our hearts hurt now, but we know this is not forever.”
Lesson? Just one.
A cruel twist of fate was what the papers commented. Alas, when we were asked to be conscious of living intentionally, to number our days, where do we even start and end the counting?
Well, in the normal run of things, actuarial science would have the pet answers. If we are playing with the most likely of probabilities, then it is a safe bet that the majority of us - short of a climate catastrophe or a meterorite crash - would live above sixty or seventy.
An insurance agent would be able to map out our living years with some confidence and accuracy. They will be able to plan out our retirement nest so that we may live the rest of the retirement years in financial security. They can’t promise how happy or how full of life each day would be lived by us, but at least, they can give us a peace of mind - provided all things remain constant and according to their projection - barring any “cruel twist of fate”.
So, with the help of actuarial science, with graphs, charts and statistics, you will be able to number your days with some self-assurance.
But the point of my post this morning goes beyond the actuary to what is essentially existential, that is, the meaning and object of our existence.
You see, stripped of all our busy schedules, the targets we strive to meet, the people we are eager to impress or prove to, and the preoccupation of a moment (or a season) that can be economic, social, political or even religious, ultimately, what doesn’t get resolve or settled fully as we are going through the motion of everyday action is not so much how we ought to live our life but ”why” we ought to live it.
Yesterday, I was at a meeting where young adults who had just started work, or thinking of a career change, or were in-between jobs gathered to learn from a couple of above sixty on how to plan for their lives, how to pick the right career, how to choose a career that they are able to excel in, how to save for retirement, how to pray for breakthroughs, and so on.
Undergirding all that is the overarching desire to find meaning in their young lives, to search for how they can connect with that meaning in a way that moves beyond the financial or the tangible, and to live a life that is as authentic as it is possible.
Most times, from an existential point of view, we are not so much looking for the right fit, as we are craving to fit into what is right, what is true, what is endearingly beautiful, what is intrinsically worthwhile, and money, fame and power generally come secondary to all that.
Some people however feel that there is no such thing. What is right to you is not right to them. What is your belief is not theirs. What seems true to you is unproven (or unprovable) to them.
That is why the search for authenticity never ends for many. And that is also why seeking and resting on the immediate, the sensorially pleasurable, the tangible bring about much more certainty and consolation than putting one’s faith and hope in the unproven eternity, that is, a source of life beyond the here and now.
So, this struggle will always reside in us, that is, the struggle for meaning, and relying on one that is sustainable, enduring and empowering. Some find it in religion. Others in secular philosophies. And still others in being merry today, for tomorrow we expire.
For me, I have yet to find a resting (settled) position. My search, and I believe for good reason, will last a lifetime. Ignorance to me is somewhat empowering, because it is always forward looking, always searching, and always understanding; never arriving, but always journeying from one inn of insight to another.
As such, I can’t be sure enough of anything and of everything, as the limit of my knowledge confronts the infinity of my ignorance.
So, this brings me back to the lovely couple whose lives ended in a cruel twist of fate. What caught my spirit in the news is that in their last moments, they died in each other’s arms. The brevity of their lives together cannot rob away their undying love and the meaning of their union that they held on to firmly and reassuringly in their final hour.
Maybe that is what authenticity means in a life, young or old, that is, while you can’t be sure enough of anything, you know however that even in the face of death, you are able to find unsurpassed peace because you have found unfathomable strength and hope in the one you love. That is how a lifetime of meaning can be experienced in a life, even one so brief. Amen. Cheerz.
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