I'm sitting here preparing to board another airplane, something I do with considerable frequency, and I find myself thinking about the nine people who died in a Learjet crash in Florida this past Sunday. The aircraft was flying from Austin, Texas, to the Bahamas when something went terribly wrong. The pilots had been dealing with weather, turbulence, and icing. Then, in a matter of moments, a seemingly manageable situation became an emergency.
I've listened to the recordings of the pilots communicating with air traffic control. They're difficult to hear. Not because of the technical details or the urgency in their voices, but because of the unmistakable realization that something terrible is happening and that they may not be able to stop it.
At one point, a pilot says, "We're out of time." Those four words have stayed with me.
I don't know what caused the crash. The investigators will eventually sort through the evidence and, hopefully, determine what happened. But I do know that nine people boarded an airplane expecting to arrive somewhere else. They had plans. They had people they loved. They probably had things they intended to do tomorrow, next week, or next year.
And then they were out of time.
I fly a great deal. I've spent countless hours sitting in airports, waiting on delayed flights, rushing between gates, and watching the world disappear beneath the clouds. Most of the time, I give little thought to the possibility that the airplane I'm boarding might be the last one I ever board.
Perhaps that's a good thing. We can't live our lives constantly anticipating disaster, but perhaps we ought to spend a little more time thinking about what it means to be ready when our time comes. Not necessarily ready in the sense of having made peace with dying. I'm not sure anyone is ever entirely ready for that. Rather, ready in the sense of having lived a life that leaves as little unfinished business as possible.
A life with fewer regrets.
I have regrets. Plenty of them. I sometimes regret leaving the Army. I wonder what my life might have looked like had I stayed, what opportunities I might have pursued, what experiences I might have had, and what kind of soldier I might have become.
I regret some of the things I didn't do with my boys when they were younger. I remember opportunities to help Charlie and Price with Boy Scouts that I let slip away. At the time, I'm sure I had perfectly reasonable explanations. Work was busy. There were other obligations. There would be another opportunity.
Except sometimes there isn't.
There are conversations I wish I'd handled differently, people I wish I'd spent more time with, and moments when I could have been more patient, more generous, or simply more present.
None of these regrets is particularly extraordinary. They're the ordinary regrets of an ordinary life. And I suspect most of us carry a similar collection.
Regret can become a burden, something we drag around for years, revisiting decisions that cannot be changed. Or it can become a teacher, reminding us to make different choices while we still have the opportunity. I've come to believe that the objective isn't to live without regrets. That's probably impossible. The objective is to accumulate fewer of them.
To make the phone call. To write that old friend you haven't heard from. To take the trip. To spend the afternoon with your children. To apologize when you've been wrong. To say what needs to be said.
To stop assuming that tomorrow is guaranteed.
Years ago, while serving in the Army, I was aboard a 737 climbing out of Panama. The airplane was loaded with two companies of Rangers and their equipment. If you've ever spent much time around Rangers, you know that they're not always the most conventional group of airline passengers.
As we climbed, the aircraft encountered some extraordinary turbulence. At one point, we dropped what seemed like 500 feet in a single instant. The drink cart struck the ceiling. Equipment went flying. Anything that wasn't secured suddenly became airborne. It was the sort of experience that ordinarily produces screams, prayers, and a sudden reassessment of one's life choices.
Not with this crowd. The Rangers erupted in whoops and laughter. Everyone was cheering. Someone yelled for the pilots to do it again. I remember thinking that if I ever had to be aboard an airplane that crashed, this was probably the group I'd want to be with.
There was something wonderfully ridiculous about it. We had just experienced a moment that might have terrified most passengers, and the cabin sounded like a group of teenagers getting off a roller coaster. Of course, we weren't necessarily being brave. We were young, confident, and perhaps a little too comfortable with danger. And we certainly weren't contemplating our mortality. But I've thought about that flight many times over the years.
There's a difference between being fearless and refusing to let fear determine how we live.
That brings me, somewhat unexpectedly, to writing.
I've written several novels and quite a few short stories, and one of the things I've learned is that interesting characters almost always carry regrets. They've made mistakes. They've hurt people. They've missed opportunities. They've chosen one path and wondered what might have happened had they taken another. Often, those regrets are what make the characters worth writing about.
A character who has never made a mistake, never lost anything, and never questioned a decision is rarely very interesting. There's little room for growth because there's little that needs to change.
But give a character something he wishes he could undo, something he failed to say, or someone he desperately wants to make things right with, and suddenly there's a story.
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