Life is Like Landing on the Hudson

The post below I wrote and originally posted on another blog of mine on January 26, 2009. I share it with you here because of some parallels the experience (Landing on the Hudson) has with using the Fairy Tale Tarot....for now I will leave you with the original post...and later I shall post my thoughts comparing the two experiences.

The recent landing of a plane on the Hudson River without any loss of lives was amazing. So amazing that it made me think about the array of emotions the passengers experienced during that short 3-5 minute flight. Over the course of just minutes people experienced anticipation, confusion, fear, sadness, loss, terror as the "Brace for Impact" message sunk in, wonder that they were still alive, panic as they realized the icy waters were an extreme danger, hope at seeing the light of day, and joy and relief at the sight of approaching rescuers.

And then it didn't take me long to realize that those emotions...that constantly changing array of feelings are often experienced during life. Life is like landing on the Hudson River. There are many times in life that we ride the same plane full of emotions. Times in our life when we dip from extreme joy to profound despair, whether it's over the loss of a job, a death, or the complications of a relationship that we treasure but do not know how to fix. Life is like landing on the Hudson.

And just like the people on the plane, we have to decide if the "shock" of our life experiences are going to leave us paralyzed and stuck in a plane filling with water. Or if we will move forward in the moment and let a "calm" sense of purpose settle over us. Experiences in life, the way our families interact, our beliefs about life, and our own emotional turmoils shape our ability to move forward. Often we do not recognize the significant impact our relationships with others have on our ability to manuveur that plane down for a safe landing. The most important element in our lives is unconditional love and so many people have no one providing it and no idea what it feels like.

Without someone who truly cares for us and accepts us, it is pretty hard to land the plane of our life in the Hudson without fatalities. Life is like landing on the Hudson....the range of emotions can be terrifying but it is in the way that we handle those aspects of our lives that can make all the difference in a safe landing or a crash that ends our lives.

In a future post I will write about why the Fairy Tale Tarot reminded me of this older post. The way we experience emotion in our lives and the way the emotions both make us who we are and have the potential to make us question who we really are.