The issue of condolences on the pprune site is compelling. I feel that we post condolences because we are all of the same ilk, and the same need to communicate our experiences drives us to communicate our fears.
Few of us fly because it is a job, or that we are compelled to by outside forces. We fly because we love it, we like its challenge, its rarity. We like to tell people that we fly. Perhaps we fly helicopters because they are even more difficult, more unusual.
We are in the same club.
We like to fly because it is an uncompromising endevour, one that brooks few errors, that embarasses, maims and even kills for cause and sometimes almost in a whim. We are not fools, we know that this danger makes the sauce spicier. With the cost of failure so high, the pride of success is that much greater, and we welcome it. When one of ours dies while flying, we know that there is a chance, under odds that we control, that it could have been us.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
-John Donne