Another Great Note from "The World is Flat"

After telling the story of Candace Lee, a young, ambitious, optimistic girl who tragically died on 9/11 on the plane directed by Mohammed Atta, the author notes, "When Candace Lee Williams boarded Flight 11 she could not have imagined how it would end. But in the wake of 9/11, none of us can now board an airplane without imagining how it could end - that what happened to Candace Lee Williams could also happen to us. We all are now so much more conscious that a person's life can be wiped out by the arbitrary will of a madman in a cave in Afghanistan. But the fact is, the chances of our plane being hijacked by terrorists today are still infinitisimal. We are more likely to be killed hitting a deer with our car or being struck by lightning. So even though we can now imagine what could happen when we get on an airplane, we have to get on the plane anyway. Because the alternative to not getting on that plane is putting ourselves in our own cave. Imagination can't just be about reruns. It also has to be about writing our own new script."

I love this quote. I just love the way he puts the image in our head with the cave. It makes you realize, if you haven't already, that when your time has come, there's nothing you can do about it, but if it's not your time, then, until that specific time, you are invincible.