well for all the bragging we're able to do about how strong and near indestructable the cropduster airplanes we work on are, with a protective frame built around the pilot like an offroad race truck/car, to keep him safe, every once in a great while we see a crash where the conditions, rare as they are, exceed the capabilities of the safety features.
A regular customer of ours lost one of his pilots who was spraying last night when his plane went straight into the ground. It is unknown why and will be for quite some time. It is surprisingly quite possible to reconstruct what happened and find out the cause but no matter what that outcome it is a sobering blow to the cropdusting community across the country, we have not lost a pilot nationwide for a while; especially locally. I don't even know how many wrecks we've picked up in the last five years without casualty, this time was different though.
So I know there is only one on my list that flies but there are plenty of other ways to die at any second, it's a powerful reminder to all of us that we probably don't have as much time as we think we do; to me it reinforces how trivial and immature it is to leave a relationship unresolved because it makes us too uncomfortable to deal with at the time. The saying to live life like it's your final hour has been bugging me and the last two years it's becoming apparent just how true that really is. There is no relationship or friendship gone FUBAR that is worth leaving unresolved. Go seperate ways? Fine, do the right thing and deal with the problem so you can both move on and learn something useful. To "deal with it and move on" is not coined from taking the easy way out and running from a problem by avoiding; it's the hard way, it sucks and it's not any fun but it is by far the most productive.
This is also a stinging reminder to me to not be so passive and mediocre in how I spend time and effort pursuing who God is and what His plan is, both for me and those He puts me in contact with.