MH17 - or how everybody of us can become a victim of war

Given the most recent events, which left the whole world shocked, blogging about my hobby just doesn't seem appropriate. And given that one of my daughter's best friends saw them checking in when she just had returned from a vacation in Spain, it comes pretty close. I can't stop thinking about the passengers. They were probably cheerful, maybe a few who suffered from flight anxiety, but nobody could prepare them to what happened a few hours later. What does one feel in a passenger jet that was just targeted and hit by a rocket? Did they die immediately? Or did they have to live through those agonizing seconds from the impact of the rocket to the plane crashing down in rural Ukraine? What do you feel in such a moment? Did they pray? Closed their eyes and waited for the end to come? Think about their families they'd never see again? How much time to think you have in a few seconds? How many thoughts are racing through your mind on such a situation? I guess it's impossible to compare for us.

But one thing is for sure - they are war victims in a war that never played a role in their lives before Thursday. They died in a war that was never declared to them, out of nothing, because the pilot didn't avoid the area like many pilots did lately. They were on their way to have a great vacation or job obligations. This war in Oekraïne didn't play a role in their lives until Thursday. They lived lives like you and me, like your next neighbor maybe, and this is the thing that makes it so scary to us. It could happen to anybody. You don't have to live in a war zone to become a war victim. You actually only have to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and you can become a victim of a war. Or a fatal car crash or natural disaster. Life can be over within seconds, and MH17 showed us again. It was our reality check we'd rather ignore. It can really happen to anybody, and even worse, it can hit twice at the same spot, like with that Australian family that lost family members a few months ago when a Malaysian Airlines plane just disappeared from the radar never to be found again, and that same family lost more members in the MH17 crash.

Hug your loved ones tight tonight.