Excellence On The Job

Like the rest of the country, I watched what dominated the front pages and news networks yesterday: the emergency landing of the jet plane on the Hudson River. This was literally the coldest day that we experienced in years. If it weren't for the amazing man in the cockpit, Chelsey Sullenberger, the 150 passengers on board US Airways Flight 1549 would have surely been exposed to hypothermia, or badly hurt, or killed. Pretty much everyone made it home last night. People described Captain Sullenberger as "the pilot's pilot." Here's what the Inquirer reported about him in today's paper:

"He earned his pilot's license at 14, was named best aviator in his class at the Air Force Academy, flew fighter jets, investigated air disasters, mastered glider flying, and even studied the psychology of how cockpit crews behave in a crisis.

This is someone who has not just spent his life flying airplanes, but has actually dug very deeply into what makes these things work, and I think he proved it," said Robert Bea, a civil engineer who has known Sullenberger for a year."

How many people spend their lives obsessing about how to improve themselves on the job? What a glorious gift to be in a profession that inspires a person to learn more every day, to "dig deeply into what makes these things work."


I think Martin Luther King understood the stuff that makes professionals like Sullenberger tick, and he evidences it with the quote that I put next to his image. I want all of the students in my senior seminar class, and all the rest of my students for that matter, to one day find themselves in a profession for which they feel PASSION. I guess at the end of the race, when we're six feet under, we all want them to say, "Here is a great (fill in the blank) who did his job well."

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." --A. Einstein

I've been mulling this quote over for a few days. It all comes down to choice, I suppose. Some people go through life bored. Nothing excites them and clinging to them is a mordant cloud of cynicism or a jaded feeling of "been-there-done-that." Ho Hum.

Or we can chose the alternative. This computer and Internet with which I'm communicating is a miracle. The wooden desk upon which this computer rests is a miracle, grown from a tree that made its own food from sunlight, water, and soil - and shaped by tools fashioned from metal, tools guided by human ingenuity.

I could go on listing hundreds of more miracles that are literarlly ten feet away, but we mustn't get carried away. Or may we?
Thanks, Einstein!

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” - Gandhi

This quote grabbed me from the window of a poster store as I strolled along South Street earlier today. The older I get, the more I think about the fragility of life. Not to sound morbid, but I look at the obituaries more these day. I "get" the elderly more. My heart goes out more to people who fail, through fate or dumb carelessness, to live to a ripe old age. Today on TV, I saw a story about an Army veteran - a guy my age - who found out last Valentine's Day that he had ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). His degenerative, deadly condition fries his nervous system and turns his muscles to mush, making him move like an old man. He's in a great deal of pain and walks with a cane, but he has the courage to take it day by day and deal with it.

The man said that he refuses to get down because he knows that in another few months, he will yearn to be as he is now, still able to get around and feed himself. Today is as good as it gets.

I feel so blessed to be healthy, and though its fairly likely that I'll be around in a week, a month, a year - heck even 40 years from now - there are no guarantees. "Live as if you were to die tomorrow," says Gandhi. Take risks. Have passion. Bleed enthusiasm. Improve. Carpe Diem. Don't waste time.

"Learn as if you were to live forever." - Obtaining knowledge, insight, and wisdom should be our addiction. Everything we learn improves us and makes us stronger. In some ways the person who stops learning metaphorically dies.
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

R.I.P. Dr. John Pryor - You're a guy who would have gotten this quote
http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20081226_Penn_trauma_surgeon_killed_in_Iraq.html