Success is Beautiful

Seven hundred metres doesn't seem such a great distance when it is out of context, or the context is benign, but even a fraction of it can separate life from oblivion.

I can walk seven hundred metres and enjoy every moment, though if time is limited and the walk is part of a necessary journey enjoyment is less likely. It can be the setting out, the existential joy of motion, weather or setting, or simply what is at the end of the journey that matters. Sometimes seven hundred metres is not enough and a desire to go further and then further still can only be satisfied by getting away.

Watching moving pictures of the Chilean miners being brought to the surface is deeply emotional. To them during their incarceration every metre must have moved through many different psychological states. The depth of the rock summed across the earth's surface its mass bearing down, the technical challenge it represented, the barrier to love and loved ones, for the deceivers a protection against the inevitable consequences of discovery bought about by the all the remote attention they and their lives have received. Being trapped has many degrees of separation not just the physical. Knowing freedom can be derived from only one.

It is affirming to see the impact of the successful rescue on the faces of the rescued, the rescuers and most of all the families. If ever it can be doubted that we are born to love then these pictures are the antidote. So many people have been lost in similar circumstances over the course of human existence that it would be easier for us as a race to dismiss another group of trapped miners as a common place and not worth the allocation of scarce resources. Perhaps some did this time and thought it too difficult or maybe they just didn't care enough. But some made the effort, skillfully meticulous and diligent they have achieved a tremendous victory for humanity.

The rescue is ongoing. I am nervous that it may falter at some point. I think of others in similar situations who didn't make it, the Russian sailors on the Kursk, the many in the World Trade Centre, let us hope that this mission is successfully completed and let us give thanks to humanity for having the capacity to love so effectively.