As I See It / October 2005
On the Edge
Katrina is providing extensive, painful learning experiences that require big solutions, massive effort and lots of money. Terrible circumstances leave participants little option but to adapt and change.
Terrible circumstances also give nonparticipants a chance to adapt and change.
Looking at the flooded streets, the wrecked homes, who didn’t wonder, “What would I do if that happened to me? Where could I go? What would I save? Who would go with me? Would anyone be sorry if I never came back?”
Seeing that mass of humanity crammed into municipal facilities or dropped with nothing, in the open, at the edge of disaster, it’s natural to enter the dangerous territory of introspection. “How would I act in those circumstances? Would I steal food? Draw a gun for a drink of water? What kind of person would I be with no clothes, no car, no home, no hope?”
Katrina has given us an opportunity to see ourselves more clearly and to see each other more compassionately.
We will find the big solutions. We will make the massive effort. We will raise a LOT of money. And we will rebuild what the storm destroyed.
But governments and agencies are just implements, tools for the job at hand.
People will do the rebuilding.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead said, Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Scores of thoughtful, committed citizens with hammers supported by hundreds of thoughtful, committed citizens with ideas, and thousands of thoughtful, committed citizens with open hearts and wallets, will again change the world.
The lasting lesson from this monumental disaster is that ultimately we have to watch out for each other. When everything is stripped away, all we can rely upon is the kindness of strangers.
We should start practicing right away. Not only in the big ways, but in the small ways that make the moments of each day more tolerable, with manners, apologies, courtesy, acknowledgments, tolerance and patience.
The new clerk whose unfamiliarity with the price of mangoes holds up the line, the customer service rep whose foreign accent is hard to understand, the salesman who doesn’t have all the answers – they may be the heroes of the next disaster. They may be the thoughtful, committed citizens who drive emergency vehicles, serve soup, rescue pets or give blood.
Margaret Mead suggested that the solution to all the problems we might face tomorrow, depends largely upon how children grow up today. The best plan for the future is having children grow up with parents and neighbors who are good citizens, whose integrity is nonnegotiable and who can teach the survival skills they might one day need. The looters and thugs who surfaced during Katrina’s aftermath clearly had a different experience.
When emergency officials called for help, they asked for fire fighters, police officers, engineers, doctors, nurses, carpenters, electricians - individuals and groups armed with specifically useful knowledge and skills. It was a humbling moment for many professionals, whose training equipped them to make a living, but not to save lives, even their own. Neither lawyers nor yoga instructors, nor many of the self actualizing vocations we value or promote, made the list. It isn’t a judgment, just a reminder that whatever our aspirations, they should include the ability to take care of our own basic needs. When the world falls apart, individuals that cannot help themselves also cannot help others.
It doesn’t take a disaster to provide good learning experiences. Consideration and kindness learned in the kitchen or the checkout line pays off in the trenches - or the levees and the shelters - later.
Katrina showed us the good, the bad and the ugly about humanity, not that it was new information. Still, full network coverage is hard to ignore. Maybe it will be harder this time to forget.
Be ready. Be nice.
The day after tomorrow, everyone’s life may depend on it. PL
Copyright © 2005-2006 A Woman's View. All rights reserved.
Femme Fair 2006
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