Death Happens, Even To Heros
I got up this morning and started my coffee. I have at least two cups every morning. This morning is no different. While the coffee maker bubbled, gurgled, steamed and hissed, I sat down and started to read my email. The first thing I read was Dave Winer's latest DaveNet.
I've read Dave's stuff for most of the past 7 years that I have been on the Internet. He has amused, captivated, irritated, and pissed me off at times. I think his piece "Men Stay Silent" is one of the better commentaries I've ever read on men, emotions, and social constraints. This morning I read "Moon Missions". It hit a nerve on what I've been feeling since I got over the initial shock of yesterday's accident. I will not call it a tragedy, because that word does not describe the event. These people died doing a job they loved, they died quickly, and they died doing a job that they knew could kill them.
That's not a tragedy, it's how most of us would wish to go if we had a choice. Every day; world-wide, almost 8500 people die due to AIDS/HIV related illnesses. That's a tragedy. Smoking will kill over 400,000 people this year, while we will arrest over 700,000 for charges related to Marijuana. That's a tragedy (and damn ironic if you think about it). The deaths of seven people in such a high-profile event is news, but it is not a tragedy. The causes and reasons for the deaths is news, but that is for another day, when we have facts to work from.
Yesterday we; once again, had a chance to see how TV distorts reality. It is a lens that can focus us on the real, the important, the unreal, and the insignificant. But it does not give us unvarnished truth, only the images it wishes us to see. Yesterday was such a day. The problem with TV is that it tends to beat a subject to death, to the point that we get sick of it. I remember in the aftermath of 9/11; after a week of watching, I had to keep the TV off for weeks because I just got to the point that I was tired of crying every time I saw them replay some of the more horrific images. I got the same feeling yesterday afternoon as I watched for the 50th time the images of the shuttle breaking up over Texas.
Death comes to us all in it's own time. It is the one true, great unknown in our existence. We have created a million different faiths and belief systems to deal with this one topic. Dave is right, TV would do us better if it simply allowed us to see the truth of it. The problem is none of us want the truth. Instead we seek the hyper-real deaths of TV and the movies. No one moment has so defined my life as being present when my Grandmother passed away. For the first time in my life I came face to face with that scariest of truths, we all die, some of us just do it more publicly then others...mj
12:28:19 PM 
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