In It Together

Like most people who live on the outer hook of Cape Cod, where the land juts thirty miles out into the Atlantic Ocean, I’ve long accepted my vulnerability to howling winds and rising seas, but I’d be less than honest if I didn’t admit to thinking a great deal more about it since Hurricane Sandy. When the images of devastation on television look a lot like the beach houses, marinas, and sand dunes you see every day, it’s a powerful reminder that it could be your turn next.

So how do you get ready—not physically, but psychologically and spiritually? Whether it’s a superstorm, a professional crisis, or a personal loss, how do you prepare yourself to move beyond your own fears so that you can be a calm and supportive presence to others? What can you do to make it more likely that in a disaster you will be able to offer the best of who you are?

Surely our potential for getting through natural disasters like hurricanes, or man-made ones like the “fiscal cliff,” would be enhanced by having real conversations, seeking common ground, and sharing responsibility when difficulties arise, through acts of kindness and courtesy, and adopting the attitude that other people are doing the best they can.

I remember reading a story about a man who was walking his dog on 9/11 when he came around a corner and saw the second of the Twin Towers burst into flame. His first thought was about survival—he needed find a store and get water. As he pushed a cart full of bottled water out onto the sidewalk, however, he saw ghost-like people covered in grey dust running up the street toward him and suddenly felt ashamed that he had thought only of himself. I don’t know what he did next, but I’d like to think he started passing out bottles. And I hope I’d do the same.

Being in it together, in community with others, is the answer to whatever crisis life brings our way, be it a natural disaster, or joblessness after unemployment benefits have ended, or caring for a loved one with a terminal illness. And what frightens me, even more than climate change or economic uncertainty, are the forces of division, ethnic, economic, and political, I see at work in our society. Widespread anger, blame and a sense of individual entitlement keep us from using everyday interactions as opportunities to practice fellowship with one another.

A few years ago I was at the grocery store when I heard a voice over the PA system announce that a technical malfunction in the card readers was preventing customers from paying electronically. If you wanted to pay using a credit or debit card you’d have to do it the old fashioned way and fill out a slip.

I finished my shopping and got in a long line leading up to the service desk where a frazzled young woman was operating one of those manual slide credit card machines as fast as she could. I noticed that there were a number of grocery-filled carts pulled over to the side near her, one of them dripping ice cream on the floor, and I asked a clerk what was going on. “People got so angry they just left their carts and walked out,” he explained.

All I could think of on the way home was, what if this had been a real emergency?

Surely our potential for getting through natural disasters like hurricanes, or man-made ones like the “fiscal cliff,” would be enhanced by having real conversations, seeking common ground, and sharing responsibility when difficulties arise, through acts of kindness and courtesy, and adopting the attitude that other people are doing the best they can.