Keeping Afloat After the Sinking

The Titanic hit an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on the tragic night of April 14, 1912, and sunk two and a half hours later. 100 years later, I was at Belfast, at the Harland & Wolff shipyard where the Titanic was built. In my hands were copies of the St Louis Post-Dispatch which bore the screaming headlines ‘1302 lives lost when ‘Titanic’ sank; 868 saved, the Russian East-Asiatic Radio telegram (M16307) that read ‘Women and children in boats cannot last much longer’, the music score of the hymn ‘Nearer My God to Thee’ allegedly the last tune played by the ship’s band and even the menu of the luncheon served on that day.

No one could be at the site of a historic disaster and remain unmoved.

On board the Titanic was also a broad spectrum of passengers ranging from millionaires to seekers of fortune in the New World. Each passenger had his own agenda whether he was in a first class room with a marble toilet or a third class open berth sharing toilets made of iron. But then again, irrespective of their status or their private agendas, they were subjected to ‘another agenda’ beyond their control, mainly the gift of life or the end of it. The Titanic had gone down in history as the ship that was unsinkable or ‘designed to be unsinkable’. This reminds me of the frailty of men and Murphy’s law that "anything that can go wrong will go wrong". How many times have we witnessed our well-planned schedule go completely berserk because of an unforeseen circumstance? We all have our good days and our bad days. If we see ourselves in the bigger picture of things, we would save ourselves the agony of mulling around in our own despair when things do not go according to the way we hope or plan. For most professional or personal matters, I like to work within time frames and deadlines. It gives a sense of urgency to knuckle down and tackle a problem head on so as to achieve the desired results. It helps us put up with a less than desirable situation if we know that the ending of it is within realistic time. The Titanic also had survivors who lived on to tell their tales, Margaret (Molly) Brown, an American with Irish ancestry being one of them. Her survival gave her an international platform to talk about political and social issues like miners’ rights, women’s rights and the development of the juvenile court system. Because she was given a second chance in life, she went on to make the most of it. It has been said that she achieved more in life after her brush with death than before it. A second chance in life helps us remember that each day of living is a gift. Then we will be more careful how we choose to live it and how we choose to treat others. We love routine and the familiar, nothing wrong with that. But sometimes making the effort to step out of our comfort zone will bring us to a different kind of experience. It is easier to have tea with your buddies than to arrange to have tea with someone new. It is easier to give up hoping to make friends than to try and try again. It is easier to buy things for yourself than to think of buying or making something for another person even though there is no special occasion. It is easier to look down at the pavement when you walk down the street than to look up and greet another passer-by We could be many things if we make the concerted effort to step out of our familiar selves once in a while. We could be that Stradivarius violin that had been kept hidden all this time. Unless it is played, no one can know its potential. Nothing makes me happier then when someone comes up to tell me that I have brightened her day or that I have stood beside her when she was broken. No one would ever wish for a disaster to happen and yet when it does it shakes us up to re-examine our lives, our relationship with others and our concept of time. Ironically death has the uncanny power to jolt us to the reality of how precious life is. Many times we put off topping up the petrol tank in our cars and then become anxious when the red light comes on and we worry whether the car will stall. The people we live with or we mix with do not come with bright red warning lights, but they do give us signals when they are running low. Many times, we fail to pick up these signals until it is too late.

Source: http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/keeping-afloat-after-the-sinking-1.85769