Happiness at Work

How to maximize your psychological capital for success.

by Jessica Pryce-Jones

What the death of Osama Bin Laden tells us

The significance of the death of Bin Laden

Published on May 2, 2011 by Jessica Pryce-Jones in Happiness at Work

What a few days it's been. First the Royal Wedding and now the death of Osama Bin Laden. Two seemingly opposite but very similar events because they both confirm that there can be a very different ending from a very unhappy start.

9/11 was shocking beyond shocking and hideous beyond hideous: the death of Diana Princess of Wales was simply shocking. But they were both events that drew nations together, that made us reach out across boundaries for comfort and solace: death and mortality are scary in whatever guise they come and especially unfolding live on TV.

9/11 was so brutal, so big and so incomprehensible. It left us all reeling, trying to grapple with thoughts like "How could anyone hate so much?" We came together to try to understand, to make sense of what had actually happened.

The marriage of Prince William and Catherine has ended the "death-of-the-Princess-of-Wales" story: we're now into rebirth, and the next phase. In the same way the killing of Bin Laden is now the final event in the horror of 9/11. Justice (whether you approve or disapprove) has been sought and won.

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But both Royal Wedding and the killing of Bin Laden have a much richer significance beyond the events themselves. Regardless of their circumstances, both typify the essential stories that every culture has been telling since time began - stories which help us make sense of our world. Both events offer us a clear and accessible moral: monsters do get slain (both literally and metaphorically), and love or justice can win the day.

We need to hear this story and hear it a lot. Because we all face personal tragedy in our lives. So we all have to make sense of a frequently senseless world, where accidents happen, as well as random terrible events.

When our news stories tell us that we can overcome tragedy, we latch onto them. Telling ourselves again and again that we can overcome tragedy and seeing that others actually do it, offers us all hope. Without hope there's no future, then things start to look very bleak and unhappy indeed.

So for the next few days, let's embrace the realization that love and justice do exist. At least temporarily.