John and Lisa's Blue Skies Blog – Soaring with God

A single-seat glider crashed recently in Virginia. The pilot, a Virginia Tech professor, was killed. I was saddened, particularly as a pilot and flight instructor. Many in the soaring community began wondering what could be done to eliminate accidents such as this. However, the pilot was a low-time pilot in a higher performance ship. He did some things wrong – trying to take off with the spoilers on being the biggest thing. The accident made me wonder about our culture: We seem to be so accustomed to looking for someone else to blame when bad things happen. It’s similar to our reluctance to go inside ourselves, to contemplate, to assume responsibility for our own actions. Our culture is always quick to make a new “rule” that will supposedly eliminate accidents. Maybe if we would all live in the present moment, being mindful of our actions, accidents would decline. There might be fewer crashes in our personal lives as well.