2006-06-29 4:56 p.m.
Are You Happy?
I'm sitting here at work listening to Oprah. She's talking to a family who lost their son in a plane crash.
Apparently the mother felt the son who died was happy with his life at the time of his death. She felt comfort in that.
The brother who survived remembered thinking he wasn't ready to die, he was very unhappy with his life. It couldn't end this way. So now, before he flies, he asks himself (and sometimes another brother asks) ... "Are you happy?" If the answer is yes, then he is ok to fly.
I thought that was odd, but as most discussions of death this made me think about my father. I distinctly remember thinking when I first heard of his death (before I knew it was a suicide): "I can handle this, he lead a good life, he was a good man ..."
That all shattered when I realized he wasn't happy with his life. In fact the reason he was dead was because of his dissatisfaction with his life.
Maybe that "Are you happy?" question is a pretty good one.