The Titanic

Yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision, but today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope.

 - Khalil Gibran

"I was waiting for so long, for a miracle to come. Everyone told me to be strong. Hold on and don't shed a tear..."

- Celine Dion.  

The Titanic, they called it the Ship of Dreams. It was supposed to spell a new dawn for man. It was supposed to be the greatest thing ever invented by man, but it sunk, killing 1,517 people and leaving only 706. It took 3 years to build the Titanic but less than a minute to sink it.

You all know the story and I won't rehash it. We all make mistakes, we all do things we shouldn't do. Sometimes they work out and sometimes they don't. Sometimes, Murphy's law will apply to you, anything that can go wrong will go wrong and you will hit an iceberg. You'll never see it coming, just as the crew of Titanic didn't see the iceberg till it was too late.

Life happens to everybody, jobs end, children die, engagements are called off, marriages end, women miscarry, businesses go bankrupt, things fall apart. As the master of your own life and the architect of your fate, you design and draw up impeccable plans, not quickly no. Rather through tireless days and sleepless nights, you craft your dreams and paint a picture of the world you want to live in. Nothing left to chance, everything is mapped out, well maybe not everything but you convince yourself that you have got it together that at least even if you fail, at least you tried greatly. Nay, you say to yourself, you force yourself to believe that it is impossible to fail, because those who have gone this way before insist that if you put yourself in a situation where failure is not an option, you will succeed.

Well, that works most of the time, until you lose your job or a loved one is diagnosed with cancer. That is, everything makes sense until the one thing, the one component of your plan that you felt was invulnerable collapses and everything comes apart like it was never solid in the first place. I once heard a story about a man who succeeded in all he put his hands to. He had the Midas touch, no venture of his failed or broke even. All his efforts were rewarded gloriously. He believed that he was untouchable, that his excellence bordered that of a god. Well, one day he got sick and his wife whom he had always taken care of, did not know to run the businesses and he lost it all.

Through the darkness and good times

I knew I'd make it through

And the world thought I'd had it all...

Things collapse, now you've lost your job, your main and perhaps even, your only source of income. You smile but through your eyes your sorrow shows. Your dreams, your great dreams of building a great home for your family, your dreams of sending your children to great schools, your dream of giving your family the finer things in life goes down the drain. You do all that you know to do, you do things that you never thought you'd have to do. Your bear the humiliation and try to smile. You hide the stories of your former trappings, you try to conceal your former life from your current colleagues. You can't let them know how far you have fallen.

The people who would have once greeted you as sir on your way into a building or into an office, the people who would have saluted you and spoken reverently to you now harass you when you try to enter the building where you work as a handyman. They treat you like a suspect or a criminal. You are silent on your true qualifications. You are reduced to pleading with people who work in the offices of the building where you now work as a handyman, for a job. Where you would have once come in as a distinguished man, you now come in as an assistant to a more skilled handyman. 

You carry the toolbox, you do as you are told. You try to keep up, but you are not as fast as the other handymen. You do your best, but you are not always paid for it. The hardest part is when your friends and former colleagues ask you where you work now - that is if you are single. If you are a family man, the hardest part is going home and having to look your kids in the eye knowing that you will disappoint them. The pain is blinding and sometimes, death seems like a reprieve, no, even better, death seems like a friend. More than death, you want to never have lived, you want that the Earth would open up and swallow you and that there would be no memory of you - that no one would remember what a failure and disappointment you were. 

When it was dark now there's light

Where there was pain now's there's joy

Where there was weakness I found my strength

Friend, I am here to tell you that I have been that man. I am here to tell you that I reached the precipice and fell hard and that it hurts when Humpty Dumpty has a great fall. It hurts to piece yourself together, it hurts not to be able to hold your head up high. It hurts to have nothing to talk about at the table of men. It hurts when you have nothing to show for all the years of your work. It hurts when you can't even provide for yourself. It hurts, it really hurts to borrow from friends and loved ones. 

This too shall pass. I know it doesn't look that way. I know exactly how it looks and feels but here's the key, when you are going through hell, keep going. When one door closes, another opens but it can be hell in the hallway. Disappointment may rain on you, people will turn on you but I can promise you this, it will end and you will smile again. 

Your unsinkable ship, your perfect plans, your awesome dreams, your great job, your rock-solid marriage will hit an iceberg. Everything you know or you think you know will change but I am here to assure you that this is not the end, not for you. You are greater than your worst tragedy, you are stronger than your greatest challenge. You may lose your will to live, you may lose the spark in your eye, you may even lose the one thing you never thought you would lose but the sun will shine again on you. You will need help but when you shine again, you will shine brighter than you ever did before and one day soon after that, you will understand the storm you went through.

What is destined will reach you, even if it be beneath two mountains. What is not destined will not reach you, even if it be between your two lips.

- Imam Ghazali