Pivotal Moments

One time after Hurricane Katrina, I was trying to explain to my mother how disorienting it was when most of your familiar landmarks disappeared all at the same time.  My mother didn't understand what I was trying to tell her.  She told me that most of the landmarks of her childhood had disappeared, and that life just did that.  I couldn't explain the difference in emotion generated when things singularly fade away over time, and when they implode in an instant.

When Katrina hit and the levees breached, many people from Biloxi, Mississippi to Southeast Louisiana had their world implode.  It is hard to tell which street is yours when there is only an occasional house or tree standing.  I remembered watching video after Hurricane Andrew hit Homestead, Florida.  People were wandering through the rubble that used to be their subdivision, and they couldn't figure out where their house used to be.

People on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi lived through that.  In Louisiana, in the lower parishes, they experienced that.  Those whose homes were closest to the levee breaches experienced that.  For the rest of us, it was going back to a house that looked normal but was a flooded mess on the inside, or going back to a house that was spared only to be surrounded by empty houses, and no services.  It was disorienting for those of us spared significant property damage or loss of loved ones, to traumatizing for those that lost all their possessions, or worse, lost a loved one.

No matter how much or how little those living in the Katrina Zone were impacted, we were all changed forever.  There is a level of security, of trust that things will be okay, of certainty in our institutions that is gone forever.

The students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School experienced that devastating implosion on February 14, 2018.  A lone gunman entered their school and killed seventeen people.  Anyone choosing to watch the news can see the tremendous emotion generated by that implosion.  What they can't see is how profoundly changed that community is.

Their lives will never be the same.  They will never be the same.  I have heard many people talking about the students and their activism.  I have heard people disparage them, and denigrate them.  I have heard people applaud them and celebrate them.

I have heard people say that their innocence and their childhoods were abruptly ended and stolen from them.

What I haven't heard is an acknowledgement that not just the students and teachers and families were forever changed, but the entire community was.

As many communities have been forever changed by a school shooting.

We have natural disasters all the time that steal normalcy like Katrina did.  What we don't often have in natural disasters is a complete failure of our support institutions to protect the citizenry.  Many residents in Puerto Rico are experiencing what we did in Katrina, and will be forever changed. I had hoped that Katrina had taught lessons that would not be easily forgotten, Maria and Puerto Rico proved that hope false.

For the communities forever changed by a school shooting, there was never any hope that change had occurred.  The people of Newtown, Connecticut and Sandy Hook Elementary School have made tremendous grass roots efforts, and effected change in multiple localities, but no national change has occurred.  The community of Parkland, Florida are turning their disorientation, their anger, their fear into action.  They are hoping for change, they are demanding change.

Not everyone will agree with the changes they demand.  Anyone who has not suffered a pivotal loss will not understand the depth and power of the emotion fueling that demand.

Non-judgmental listening is the minimum we owe to that community and to every community that suffers a devastating loss like a school shooting.

And we should all be willing to think long and hard about why we would deny their demands.  Are they asking for something that will personally hurt us the way it hurts to bury a child torn apart by bullets?  Anything that would personally hurt us the way it hurts to see your friends hunted and gunned down in your school?

Are you so attached to your rights that you can no longer see that the good of society might not be served by what you want?  Have you become so attached to an ideal that compromise is not something you will consider?

In order for change to happen, compromise is necessary.  Complex solutions to problems like epic natural disasters in hard to reach locations and excessive violence in American society are not going to have single node simple solutions.

Complex problems require complex solutions.  Complex solutions required reasonable dialogue.  Name calling and blaming and casting people into friend or foe caricatures impedes real dialogue.

We need to find solutions.  We need to help people after a catastrophic natural disaster.  We need to stop leading the world in school shootings and mass shootings.  We can't do that if we are shouting at each other and calling each other names and insisting that we know the only right answer.

Maybe, just maybe, we can stop trying to fit each other into neat little boxes.  Maybe, just maybe, we can stop pinning labels on each other.  Maybe, just maybe, we can finally accept that perfect answers don't exist, but trying to work towards better is a good thing.

I hope so.  Because this particular normal being permanent is too depressing to contemplate.

Life Force

Another post started a long time ago, it is time to finish.  Original post in blue font.

Spent time in New Jersey with family for a few days.  Visiting is hard now, as my Mom's Alzheimer's progresses.  This visit was especially hard, as my mother's sister has been diagnosed with lung cancer.

We spent a lot of time with her this trip.  We visited every day we were there, and took her to see Mom twice.  We also took her out to dinner one night.

She has decided to undergo radiation therapy to try to eradicate her cancer.  She will go five times a week for six weeks.  I don't know that she will survive the treatment.  She is very thin and frail, and has very limited mobility.  Her skin is very dry and thin and tears super easy.  I can't imagine that she can withstand any additional weight loss, and that is a side effect of radiation therapy.

What is not diminished in any way is her life force.  She wants to live.  She wants to make a contribution.  Her life force is strong.

And that got me to wondering (because you know I always do), why do some people have such a strong life force?

I don't want to creep anyone out, and I certainly don't have a death wish, but I don't know how hard I would fight to cling on to life.  I mean I would right now, because my quality of life is high.  But if I were in pain all the time, or if I was too weak to do the things I wanted to do, or if I knew I had a terminal illness that treatment would be inconclusively painful, I think I would be ready to let it go.

I don't know if that makes me selfish, or is just another expression of the pragmatic approach I have always tried to take to life.

Fast forward almost a year.  My aunt is doing great.  Came through the radiation, cancer in remission, has gained weight and strength.  Simply amazing.  And I'm still thinking about life force.

I finished a novel last night that brought me back to my thoughts about life force.  The title of the novel is White Rose, Black Forest, and it is historical fiction set in World War II Germany.  I highly recommend this novel, and so I don't want to give too much away.  But I will say that the life force of certain characters in the book ebbs and flows as their potential to do good is revealed to them.

And that got me to thinking about what it is that fuels our life force.  It was obvious watching my aunt battle cancer at eighty-eight that she felt she had important work yet to do, and needed to stay alive to do that work.

In the book, a sense of purpose, of the ability to right a wrong, or to make headway against evil was the important fuel to the character's life force.

I approach this same thought from many different directions and perspectives, but it appears one of the single most important things a person needs to maintain a life force is a strong sense of purpose.

And you don't have to be famous, or celebrated to change the world.  Your helping hand, your contribution, your smile, your words of encouragement, they can be the contribution needed.

When feeling like you are not doing enough, or feeling like you can't make a difference that matters, do one small thing.  Compliment someone.  Send a note to a friend.  Make a phone call.  Volunteer.  Feed your life force with purpose.

Each day's purpose can be small.  Say a prayer.  Meditate for peace.  Visit with someone.  But find purpose.

The good in the world is the compilation of thousands to millions of small acts of goodness.  You can add to the beauty with your words and your actions.

I keep getting sucked into the darkness that is so prevalent in the world right now.  Sometimes it feels like something big has to be done to make things better.

Stories of World War II can bring home how the small brave actions of ordinary people changed the course of the war.

We're not in the dramatic circumstances of World War II, but we are confronted daily with the insidious nature of prejudice, hatred and fear. 

We can take small brave actions to strengthen tolerance, and love and hope.  One small, kind word or action at a time.

And that is a purpose worth having.  And fuel for your life force.