Cause, effect and milliseconds

Tragic stories have surfaced in the aftermath of the plane crash near Buffalo last Thursday. The plane dove into a house and 50 lives were lost, including a person inside the home. A list of the passengers and a short biography about each are featured on the ABC News Web site. Each story and photograph is more heartbreaking than the last, and it’s emotionally draining to read the statements made by the friends and loved ones of the victims.

Among the accounts by siblings, parents and friends expressing their grief, there is one inspiring story of survival. Paul Twaragowski was supposed to be on flight 3407 from Newark to Buffalo, but his plane from New Orleans to Newark, N.J. was delayed. He missed his flight.

At first he was annoyed about the delay. He didn’t realize that this small inconvenience saved his life. Had his experience at the airport played out the way his flight itinerary had intended, he wouldn’t be alive today.

Reading about Twaragowski, I was moved. I started to think about the seemingly small events in life with the potential to make a huge impact.

The concept that every second counts might sound like a bit of an exaggeration because, in the scheme of things, a second seems like such a short amount of time. But it’s true. Our entire lives are composed of milliseconds, and the way our days play out depends on each moment individually.

We experience cause and effect daily, though on a much smaller scale than Twaragowski did. We can miss the bus by three seconds and be late for our classes; the effect is a lower attendance grade and, perhaps, the wrath of a professor or instructor who is a stickler for timeliness.

That one, final shot of tequila can be the difference between a fun night with friends and a terrible night with the toilet. One swig from the water bottle of a friend can give you mononucleosis. When a car runs a red light, the car it hits in the intersection had one second of bad luck. One second is all it took to determine which car was hit and which car continued down the road unscathed.

Though life is measured in milliseconds, we tend to gauge it in days, weeks, months and years – even decades. We assess our lives based on memorable events rather than the minor occurrences leading up to those events.

We should realize that fate is something beyond our control. We can only manipulate the outcomes of so many moments. According to ABC News, Twaragowski’s “extraordinary serendipitous survival” was a sign of fate.

The 49 other passengers aboard the Continental Express flight weren’t as fortunate as Twaragowski. They were on time for their ill-fated flight and tragically lost their lives as a result.

Life is a crapshoot, and many events are beyond our control. But it’s important to take the time to recognize that each moment counts. It only takes a second to change our lives.