My Turn is one of my favorite parts of Newsweek--a regular feature written by regular people with a story to tell. They are always interesting, thought-provoking, and well-written. For a while in college, my goal was to get my own My Turn essay published. Maybe I should dust off that goal.
Anyway, Sully talks about his reaction to everything that has happened since that fateful moment when he realized his airplane would not make it to any runway. "All I really wanted was to talk to my family, and get some dry socks," he writes.
At first he didn't understand why people wanted to call him a hero, but gradually, "I was better able to put everything in perspective and realize how this event had touched people's lives, how ready they were for good news, how much they wanted to feel hopeful again."
Sully offers a ray of hope to people facing crises all over:
Perhaps in a similar fashion, people who are in their own personal crises—a pink slip, a foreclosure—can be reminded that no matter how dire the circumstance, or how little time you have to deal with it, further action is always possible. There's always a way out of even the tightest spot. You can survive.
Any day now, I'll receive my pink slip, and in the next two months I will go back and forth between the stressful feeling that comes with facing a lay-off and the serene knowledge that I will find a way to land on my feet, just as Sully and his awesome crew landed a failing aircraft on a river on a cold January day.
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