We're Not Invincible

"This is the beginning of a new day. You have been given this day to use as you will. You can waste it or use it for good. What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it. When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever; in its place is something that you have left behind...let it be something good."


Beware....I'm on a soap box today. You might just want to skip my ranting.

This weekend, Amy Winehouse was found dead in her apartment. She was 27 years old. A month or so ago, Ryan Dunn, one of the stars of a tv show on MTV called "Jackass" was killed in a car accident.

Before I get started on this blog, Please don't misunderstand me. I am heartbroken anytime I hear of someone duying. Truly, I am. And clearly these two people had difficulties in their lives that I will never know or understand. And moreover, my heart goes out to their families and friends, and to the family and friends of Dunn's passenger, who also lost her life. God bless them. I would never wish that pain on anyone.

But when I read more and figure out what actually happened to these people, I got really frustrated.

Take Dunn. In the crash that ended his life, he was driving his car at 130 miles an hour. They crashed into a guard rail at that speed and completely destroyed the car. It ended up in the woods next to the road, where it caught fire. Police said that it was the most horriffic scene they had ever witnessed.

And Winehouse. She struggled with drug and alcohol abus for years, and basically self-destructing in front of the camera. Even with the support of her family and her friends and after multiple stays in treatment facilities, she lost the battle with her demons. Her most famous song was about her own refusal to go to rehab. And even when she did go, she apparently refused to accept that she had a problem and makek changes in her life.

And now these people are dead, for no reason at all. Just really bad, unexplainable decisions. Thinking that they are invincible--that the rules do not apply to them--that death won't find them.

This makes me think back to people that I have lost in my own life. People who fought and wanted to live and did everything they could to stay on this earth with their families. To spare them the pain of loss that comes with death. It makes me think of the children at the youth camp in Norway this weekend, who did not make any bad decisions, but we were gunned down in a horrible tragedy. About the people on the planes and in the buildings who lost their lives on 9/11.

And you know what? It frustrates me. It frustrates me that there are people who fight to live, who make the right decisions and die anyway, and others who seem to be so non-chalant about death.

We're not invincible. We can't drive cars at 130 miles an hour and expect that nothing bad will ever happen to us. We can't abuse drugs and alcohol for years and think that because we are famous, somehow it will not ruin our bodies.

And you know what's more? Decisions that we make impact lives far, far beyond our own. The family and friends who are left behind in this kind of tragedy are often innocent victims---people who themselves did not make the wrong decisions---but who suffer the consequences.

Now I'm all for living your life. But I'm not for making really bad decisions that result in senseless tragedy and horriffic loss for those people around you. I can only hope that these senseless deaths will have some sort of positive impact on people who are headed down the same path.