Once again we wait for news of the end of the world

When huge airplanes go missing, it gets my attention. Despite continued attacks by the ant hordes in my domicile, I find myself distracted, riveted, mystified, and perplexed, along with the rest of the world. It's hard to concentrate on my marketing tasks when the fate of those passengers is unknown. I especially grieve for their families. The not knowing must be unbearable. Yet, moment by moment, I assume they bear it. Living hell.

Until the authorities find wreckage, those passengers exist in an in-between state, sort of like Schrodinger's cat... not exactly alive, but undead, until proven otherwise. It's the not knowing that makes us crazy. Disasters happen all the time: we express our shock and horror, we grieve, we move on. But in this case, there's nothing to move on from, just a great big hole in our sense of rightness. This isn't how disasters are supposed to be.

There are always insights to be gleaned from bizarre events. Call them lessons if you want, I'm not sure I would go that far: It implies somewhere there is an inept supreme instructor sending us vague homework assignments. Not unlike online learning, now that I think of it. Having just finished an eight-year stint as an online learner, I can say with some authority that some of my so-called mentors were dispensing vague assignments as if they were omnipotent supreme beings. Whatever.

Anyway, what insights are we to glean from a missing jumbo jet?

I guess the first thought that comes to mind is that this unfolding tragedy is a reminder we aren't in control. Duh, you say? Maybe you—you wise adult, you—get that we control very little in life. But how were you as a two-year-old? Maybe you were content to go with the flow, but I remember feeling bat-crazy if I lost for one moment my sense of autonomy and self-determination. No, I won't eat my damn peas! Stop trying to tell me what to do, what to think, how to feel! (Which of course explains my compulsion to DIY or die. But that's another story.)

After a while I grew up and (sort of) assimilated the disappointing reality that bad stuff happens and I have no control over it. I say sort of, because I'm embarrassed to admit how often I cruise through my day thinking if I just do A-B-C, then I'll be rewarded with X-Y-Z. As if I have the magical power to control outcomes. I guess I assume my ability to influence the world around me means I am in control. I mean, I've certainly created my share of chaos in my time... doesn't that mean I have power? Time and again, I fall into the trap of cause-and-effect: Do this, get that. Time and again, I'm shocked when things don't unfold as planned. As I planned. X-Y-Z doesn't happen, no matter how much I try. Or complain. Or weep. I get something else instead, something better, something worse... the point is, I delude myself that I have control.

So in the case of this missing jet, my brain, wrestling with the unacceptable pain of not knowing, tries to pretend I can do something to help. My brain becomes obsessed with solving the mystery. I haven't gone so far as to try to access satellite pictures, as I hear some people are doing...I imagine the crowd-sourced search that is going on right now, people staring at images of open seas, shot from 100 miles above the earth. Amazing the technology, but more to the point, how hard to accept the fact that we may never know what happened. I didn't know anyone on that plane. If I did, how would I be able to live with not knowing?

I'm sure there are more insights from this mess, but I'm too morose to find more words. Everything seems pointless when the world is poised on the fine line between dead-undead, waiting.