Facing the unimaginable

The terrible tragedy of missing flïght MH370 highlights some important lessons to be learned, not least of which is how to respond in a truly global way to such a mystery. As it is, there has been an unprecedented level of cooperation and coordination required to find anything of the aircraft and passengers. It will be a long haul to uncover what exactly happened and why but more global cooperation and coordination and technology will surely come out of it.

What we don’t know we are compelled to make up (a function of our brain) and in the absence of facts, the flïght MH370 story still has a long way to go. When something out of the box happens, it takes us by surprise and the reaction of regular people follows a pattern. When reality shifts, we have to shift too, and that is hard for most of us. Our values can be challenged, our beliefs can be too and our emotions can take over for a time. We can deny, avoid and try to bury it but the new reality will settle in.

I have experienced this first hand. On July 10th 1985 I had just started night shift in the Auckland Central Police Control Room when I took the first 111 call telling us the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior had sunk following an explösion at Marsden Wharf downtown. As a 26 year old paid up member of Greenpeace at the time (I didn’t know any other cops who were members in those days), my response to this was very different than my colleagues. As more calls flooded the control room, the general tone of the comments was ‘serves them right – they have been making bombs and blown themselves up’. There wasn't much sympathy. These comments came from complete ignorance of what Greenpeace was about therefore there was no recognition of any possible motive for someone to sabotage the ship. My first thought was just that – sabotage, for me it had to be. I turned to my immediate colleague and said so at the time and tried to point out motive to everyone; that the ship was due to leave on a protest voyage to stop France doing nuclear testing at Muroroa, and that we needed to at least consider the implications of sabotage. I was obviously not very convincing - I was almost laughed out of the room. It was such an outrageous thing to say in those days and I copped lots of flack. I still thought I was right and I sort of wasn’t surprised it had happened. The scant facts went out on the news wires in the middle of the night, just as the other side of the world was getting into their day. Things were about to escalate.

Once the BBC and the Canadian Sun (Greenpeace originated in Canada) and numerous other news agencies in the northern hemisphere started calling us, things heated up and the incident began to attract more and more attention. Apart from drafting the earliest press releases, one of my jobs was to call out a senior CIB guy – there were still crew unaccounted for at that time. I woke him up, gave him the basics – the Greenpeace ship had sunk, there were people unaccounted for…it could have been sabotage. I was told ‘you have a sunken boat and a possible drowning – nothing to do with me’, and on no uncertain terms was I to bother him again – no evidence of a crime. Did I get an earful for waking him up! Again, he had no awareness of potential motive. Of course it wasn’t long before he was out of bed on someone else’s orders along with other senior staff. Thankfully the Sergeant who interviewed the RW captaïn and other crew discovered these were good people and there was nothing that could have caused an explösion on board that ship. This started a shift in attitude. A giant step towards the new reality came again a bit later when navy divers were finally able to go under the oil slick and actually see the holes. From then on, it was all systems go. My colleague and I set up the speciäl ops room and ran it for the rest of the shift – we were now all on the same page and the investigation took off.

I share this because the immediate and reflex denial of something we can’t imagine happening is completely normal. When things out of our control rock our world right down deep and change the landscape of reality dramatically, it takes time for us to adjust. Our brain uses memories and patterns and predicting to help us feel some semblance of control. To be faced with just how out of control we really are, how our ‘civilized selves’ are often only a thin veneer, can be frightening. The Rainbow Warrior bombing was our first attäck of that nature here in New Zealand – we hadn’t conceived of it in a meaningful way at that time so to start with it simply couldn’t be true for Police.

Malaysian Airlines were not prepared for the story of MH370 to be anything other than a routine flïght. Neither was the Malaysian Government, nor all the families. In this age of instant, we ask too much at times. Apportioning blame serves no purpose yet we are compelled to do it when feeling so powerless to change the realities and implications of such loss. These days it seems like information should be at our fingertips but we still have our limits, as we have seen in recent weeks.

We cannot predict everything and be ready for it. To live life on red alert and ready for anything isn't my idea of fun. We cannot live in fear and enjoy life at the same time. What we can do is make sure we do our best to keep our minds open. I do hope the focus regarding MH370 is on understanding, so that the lessons learned help prevent anything like this ever happening again - without ratcheting up more fear.

This world of ours needs more love. At times like this an outpouring of that can help the wounded hearts of strangers. Take a moment and think of them, the living and the dead. Send them love. We can all do that intrinsically. We make a good difference with our intentions for the wellbeing of others. We can all soothe a soul. And that’s it, from my view.
Amanda