Late Reflection

"Cabin crew, please take your landing positions"

"Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has switched on the seat belt sign, please remain in your seats..."

In a commercial flight, we hear the first announcement usually before the initial approach to landing... The second announcement, well, we hear them from time to time... during unstable air pressure outside the plane...

But hearing them in mid-flight, at an altitude of 32,000 ft. way above the Visayan Sea, you've gotta think about an impending death sentence... Those are also the words I heard from the Cabin Crew Head during my flight from Cebu to Manila last Sunday... Anyway, thanks to the pilot, a certain Capt. Gorospe who made the flight an exciting, albeit, a fearsome one.

We left Cebu under sunny skies but it seems we encountered turbulence in mid-flight. I felt calm during the entire flight and just listened to the music I had in my player. Metallica at that... I think I was listening to "Unforgiven" when the hardest, rockiest turbulence I've ever experienced in the entire flight hit the plane... and no, I did not plan the "coincidence" of the song and the situation... My music player's set at random-select songs.

We landed in Ninoy Aquino International Airport after a take two in landing... It was raining hard that time and we had, what the Captain called a "mis-approach due to the weather". Don't know what it really meant... either he made a miscalculation or the strip was so slippery. What I know is, when I looked out my window, the airstrip was perpendicular to the plane...

The next day, I recounted the story to my officemates and one of them asked me "Natakot ka, kuya?" (Were you afraid, big brother?) I simply said "No, why would I?" then smiled it off...

But the question lingered in my head... Was I really afraid? I realized after a while that if things would have gotten worse, you would not be reading this blog... I would have gone anywhere. My double-X large body would have been a feed to the fishes in the Visayan Sea... worse, a speck of ash floating in the air... And I was not ready... I was not prepared to meet the Creator just yet...

But God gave me a chance to live, to continue with life... He has a purpose why I am still here, tapping away with this keyboard... Telling a story, a testimony of how good and great He is to me, to you, and to all of us...