Ordinary

I just read a beautiful talk by Jeffrey R. Holland called "The Inconvenient Messiah" (Ensign Feb. 1984, taken from a BYU devotional). Definitely a very good talk. You can find it at lds.org. Anyway, so he included this story in it, and, well, I just really liked the story. So I'm including it here.

Some time ago Air Florida’s Flight 90 to Tampa, a Boeing 737 with seventy-four passengers aboard, began rolling down the runway at Washington’s National Airport. Nothing seemed very different about this; hundreds of planes leave that airport every day. But you all know what happened next. The plane slammed into the 14th Street Bridge, smashed five cars and a truck, and then skidded into the ice-clogged river. To quote one source: “For a moment, there was silence, and then pandemonium. Commuters watched helplessly as the plane quickly sank. … A few passengers bobbed to the surface; some clung numbly to pieces of debris while others screamed desperately for help. Scattered across the ice were pieces of green upholstery, twisted chunks of metal, luggage, a tennis racquet, a child’s shoe.

“Within minutes, sirens began to wail as fire trucks, ambulances and police cars rushed to the scene. A U.S. Park Police helicopter hovered overhead to pluck survivors out of the water. Six were clinging to the plane’s tail. Dangling a life preserver ring to them, the chopper began ferrying them to shore. One woman had injured her right arm, so [the] Pilot lowered the [craft] until its skids touched the water; his partner … scooped her up in his arms. Then [a young woman] grabbed the preserver, but as she was being helped out of the … river by [a] Fellow Passenger, … she lost her grip. … A clerk for the Congressional Budget Office who was watching from the shore, plunged into the water and dragged her to land. But the most notable act of heroism was performed by one of the passengers, a balding man in his early 50s. Each time the ring was lowered, he grabbed it and passed it along to a comrade; when the helicopter finally returned to pick him up, he had disappeared beneath the ice.” (James Kelly, Time, 25 January 1982, pp. 16-17.)

I quote from an essay entitled simply “The Man in the Water”: “His selflessness [is] one reason the story held national attention; his anonymity another. The fact the he [has gone] unidentified invests him with a universal character. For a while he was Everyman, and thus proof (as if one needed it) that no man is ordinary.

“Still, he could never have imagined such a capacity in himself. Only minutes before his character was tested, he was sitting in the ordinary plane among the ordinary passengers, dutifully listening to the stewardess telling him to fasten his seat belt and saying something about the ‘no smoking sign.’ So our man relaxed with the others, some of whom would owe their lives to him. Perhaps he started to read, or to doze, or to regret some harsh remark made in the office that morning. Then suddenly he knew that the trip would not be ordinary. Like every other person on that flight, he was desperate to live, which makes his final act so stunning.

“For at some moment in the water he must have realized that he would not live if he continued to hand over the rope and ring to others. He had to know it, no matter how gradual the effect of the cold. In his judgment he had no choice. When the helicopter took off with what was to be the last survivor, he watched everything in the world move away from him, and he deliberately let it [go].

“The odd thing is that we do not … really believe that the man in the water lost his fight. … He could not, [like Nature], make ice storms, or freeze the water until it froze the blood. But he could hand life over to a stranger, and that is a power of nature too. The man in the water pitted himself against an implacable, impersonal enemy; he fought it with charity; and he [won].” (Roger Rosenblatt, Time, 25 January 1982, p. 86.)

In this world we are all, you and I, the man or the woman in the water. We often must, like this man and Hamlet, “take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them.” (Hamlet, act 3, sc. 1, lines 63-64.) And sometimes the cost is very high. It was for Christ, it was for Joseph Smith, it was for this lone man who counted the cost there in the Potomac—and paid it. It is not easy to go without—without physical gratifications, or spiritual assurances, or material possessions—but sometimes we must since there is no guarantee of convenience written into our Christian covenant. We must work hard and do right, and sometime our chance will come. And when we’ve tried, really tried, and waited for what seemed never to be ours, then the angels may come and minister unto us. (See Matt. 4:11.)

It made me think about what I would do in a situation like that - and I decided, I think maybe I could have that kind of courage. I think most of us could. I think most of us - including and maybe especially me - don't think we have courage like that, or charity, or selflessness, but maybe that's because we haven't had the chance to exhibit it in a very grand way. And probably never will. But if it came down to it we would act with our instincts, and courage and charity can be instinctive in the big situations if we've worked to develop it in the little situations. I was thinking this morning, actually, of the maxim "Do one thing every day that scares you." (cue Baz Luhrmann music.) And I think I'm going to try to start being braver - doing things that scare me. Not in a bad way, haha, as in I'm not going to go hang out on the edges of cliffs or anything. But you know, sharing the gospel with people. Asking questions if I'm unsure of the answers. (That was one of my biggest problems in college, was fear of asking professors questions. Seriously.)

Not only those types of things involve bravery and courage, but also events or accidents in our lives we have no control over. Four years ago I started my freshman year at BYU, and a girl I had only recently met in the dorms, now a very good friend of mine, told me about the experience of losing her little brother - her dad backed over him in the car in the church parking lot when he was 5. She had been 12 at the time, so it had been 6 years since then, but over those years she had gone through therapy, had a support group, and experienced lots of family problems directly stemming from the accident. I remember distinctly her saying that she would never have thought she could have dealt with something like that - you know, like when tragedy hits someone else, we're always saying, "I could never get through that if it happened to me." I remember wondering to myself, what if that happened to Noah or Ara or Ella? But, she said, she just did. She just got through it, because the only other choice was not to get through it - and that wasn't really an option. Still now it's hard and painful and the memory hasn't gone away, but her life keeps going. And (not to be cliche) she came out stronger and braver and maybe even a better person for the experience. I'm not saying something like that will happen to me, but what if it does? The only choice, it seems, is to be brave. I guess no one knows how to do it, though, until they have to.

Secondly, I'm going to try to be more charitable and kind to people. I'm immediately reminded of something Neal A. Maxwell said (in my absolute favorite talk, which I mentioned a few weeks ago).

"Like Jesus, we can decide, daily or instantly, to give no heed to temptation (see D&C 20:22). We can respond to irritation with a smile instead of scowl, or by giving warm praise instead of icy indifference. By our being understanding instead of abrupt, others, in turn, may decide to hold on a little longer rather than to give way. Love, patience, and meekness can be just as contagious as rudeness and crudeness."

And that, friends, is my worthy goal for the day. I'm sure I'll screw up occasionally - or often - but I think that I can get better at the little things, despite the screwups. I hope so, anyway. Even if a moment like that never comes for me, I still want to feel like I'd be prepared if it did. And in the process of preparing, improve other people's lives with the little things. Some people might say I'm just dreamin'...which maybe I am..."searching for meaning in a meaningless world" and all that, and then there's that whole entropy thing...but I like to think that we all have lasting effects on each other, even if the effects go unnoticed most of the time.