Although let’s be honest, it wasn’t an adventure was it, it was a tragic disaster, but putting adventure in the title made it sounds a lot more fun than it was. Like Build Back Better perhaps and other misnamed things of that sort. But in my previous article, When someone else saves the day, I alluded to there being no-one coming to save the day. No hero, or someone to right all the wrongs and serve justice for those wrongs, however much we might want or need one to. But I may have been too hasty or general in that, as I gave further thought to the Poseidon adventure today.

They thought someone would come, and technically they did, but not in time to save the ‘sit and wait it out’ ones. But those who got up and helped to save themselves, were in fact saved as help was trying to get to them (apart from the obvious losses along the way to that rescue). And it may seem an obvious time to get up and work out how to save you and those around you, when you are capsized underwater in an ocean liner. But when your feet are on dry land, your head is above water, and people can’t be seen ‘drowning’, do the same warning signs go off? Or is that on our own terrain, we do have an advantage the ocean does not. We are not contained (as far as we know), by anything other than rules created by people, and other people then enforcing those rules. It seems everyone may have just sat there waiting and hoping, until one man stood up and decided there was another way.

So, what do we wait for? We are metaphorically upside down, deep underwater and they are telling people to stay put and sit tight. To wait it out. Just like in Grenfell Tower. The awful and tragic fire made worse when you heard many were told to stay put, as has been the case in untold tragedies, I’m sure. And The Day After Tomorrow film highlighted the opposite, when staying put was the right thing to do, but only kind of was because there was someone to come and save them. As well as other disaster films where there is a small window of opportunity presented and at the time seems the only way. Until the whole story unfolds and you can view the bigger picture. But in the real world, it’s anyone’s guess how many would really make the right decision at the right time when it matters most – because both may end up in the same result, and sometimes it is only with hindsight and reflection can we know if it was right. If we are no longer around to reflect, then we can presume we weren’t, or time just caught up with us. And so it is that we are all caught by time and circumstance, but it is down to you whether you decide to be a victim or a volunteer to life events most of the time, as a death event will catch you up one day. But until that day, you are capable of taking steps to make sure that if people are indeed going to save the day, you don’t just sit and wait it out as you might just get left behind…

(c) K Wicks