“Iceberg, Right Ahead!”

By: Corey Thompson, “The Thirsty Quill”

In the 1997 blockbuster movie Titanic, there is a moment. Actually, there are a lot of moments in the film, but one in particular catches my attention every time I watch it and reflect upon the awful tragedy that occurred on the night of April 14th, 1912.

It’s not a moment between the forbidden lovers, Jack and Rose, who symbolize the chasm of separation between social classes during that period. Furthermore, no, it’s not a moment involving a rough sketch by a struggling artist of a young maiden wearing nothing but a fictional diamond necklace that was believed to have belonged to King Louis XVI of France.

Sorry to disappoint you, but Jack and Rose, along with the elusive “Heart of the Ocean,” is Hollywood fiction. Their story, while quite touching I must admit, is no more enduring than an evaporating handprint on a steamy window in the back of a Renault model automobile below deck.

Everything else is quite accurate, down to a great number of the lines and quotations from within the film. The Captain, many of the passengers, and the events that unfolded on that fateful night are about as close to ‘reality’ as one can get in producing a movie some 85 years after the fact. Even the singing of the hymn “For Those In Peril On The Sea” in the First-Class church service on the morning prior to the ship’s sinking is legit.

Yet, the moment that often sends chills down my spine and raises the hair on my neck is the moment just after the courageous band members finish their final song, a hymn entitled “Nearer, My God, To Thee.” During the song, Titanic’s last, scenes of both chaos and serenity play out on the screen. Aging lovers, Isidor and Ida Strauss (owners of Macy’s and the namesake that was to become ‘Levi-Strauss’ [jeans]), are lying together as the flood waters rush in. Mrs. Strauss had the opportunity to board a lifeboat, but reportedly refused to leave her husband’s side, saying “as we have been in life, so shall we be in death: together.” There are families huddling together, women and children leaving brave husbands and Daddies behind…it’s gut-wrenching to watch.

Then the music stops.

One of the musicians remarks about what an honor it was to have played with them on that night, and they, just like everyone else, make their best attempt to survive. Sadly, none of the musicians did.

The scene cuts to Captain Smith, nervously awaiting his fate, on what was supposed to have been his ‘farewell voyage’ before retiring at the end of the trip. The water bursts in, and Titanic begins her long, slow plummet to the ocean floor.

Then, it happens. The background music picks up with a more sinister and serious tone, as if to accompany the final struggle for survival. The mood immediately shifts from disbelief and shock to outright horror. Fittingly, the lights go out onboard shortly thereafter.

It is in this moment that the passengers realize that there are no more lifeboats, and that rescue is not coming. The joyous moments that were their lives just hours before, are now nothing more than heavy memories pulling Titanic to her icy grave some 2 miles below the surface of the North Atlantic. As the minister quotes scripture in the waning moments, it is all-together fitting that his closing verse is that from the book of Revelation, “for the former world has passed away.”

When I watch the market continue to decline day after day, and I hear the never-ending reports on job loss, unemployment, and foreclosure, I can’t help but think that in some small way, our “former world” has also passed. The joyous moments of prosperity and economic surge have, for the time being, been pulled out from beneath us and there are no lifeboats in sight. In fact, it’s becoming more and more difficult to find a decent lifejacket these days.

As the recession was in its earliest stages and the markets fell, there was a real sense among many of us (myself included) that we were riding safely aboard an “unsinkable ship.” Yet, just as Titanic was made of iron, our nation and our economy are made of disposable jobs and flimsy paper, neither of which can do much to save us if the waters continue to flood in and pull us downward.

When and where does all of this stop? Very soon I hope and pray. None of us can afford to take on much more water in the midst of the icy seas around us.

I thought “the bottom” had been reached weeks ago. I was wrong. We’re still going down by the head, and there still aren’t enough lifeboats onboard.

As the band plays around us and chaos sets in, we’ve forgotten our keen ability as Americans to stay calm in the face of difficulty. We’ve lost our nerve.

Now is the time to find it once more and rekindle that fighting spirit. We’re Americans, we’ve never been ones to go down without a fight. We’re in the icy seas right now my friends, and there’s never been a better time to prove just how well we know how to stay afloat, and to swim ourselves back to the way of life we’ve always believed in.