I remember like it was yesterday the fear that shot through my body the moment I heard the first tree crack and fall, crashing to the ground in the middle of the night over fifteen years ago. Hurricane Fran, a category three storm, swept through North Carolina in September of 1996 and I had my first indoctrination into true southern weather. Growing up in the northeast, blizzards were the worst that nature doled out plus the occasional wind and rain of a tropical storm. Up until that point I had no real understanding of the power of nature.
The next morning when I walked outside and saw the damage, the many downed trees, power lines, broken limbs and branches covering every inch of our yard, I was overwhelmed. My confidence in the world around me took a major hit. No longer could I be certain that the enormous oaks would remain standing nor had I realized how important the sense of permanence they provided was to me. To see them uprooted like a blade of grass was horrifying.
Five years later on September 11th of 2001, I, like many, experienced another profound jolt to my sense of confidence in the world. Who could have imagined that a structure such as The World Trade Center could be cut off at the knees and crumble to the ground in a heap? I became distrustful of tall buildings, just as I had tall trees. They were not dependable and neither was my sense of security.
We live in a glass bubble in this country, largely protected from extreme weather, extreme people and extreme events. We are blessed. While there are poor among us, we scarcely, if ever, see real poverty and the squalor that accompanies it. We look at the world through rose colored glasses, even as there is ugliness and devastation, misery of a kind we can’t imagine, hunger, thirst, violence, and degradation alive and well throughout the world. Did I say that we are blessed?
Our rose colored glasses crack a bit when we experience the devastation of a natural event, such as Hurricane Fran and now Hurricane Sandy. We are so unaccustomed to having our worlds turned upside down that when it happens we are shocked. It’s a real and lasting shock that alters our perception of reality, as it did mine, and I have great compassion for the people who are suffering through this now. Losing a sense of security can be devastating, no matter what the cause.
It may be harder for the rose colored glasses crowd to absorb this type of shock because we have no inner emotional protection in place. We are in a very real sense, naive. The trick is to eventually not only survive but to carry on without becoming numb; to build confidence again, a confidence in something greater than trees and buildings and to learn to trust life even if everything around us collapses. It’s a tall order, but we can remain standing and whole, with purpose and a reason to carry on, even if that purpose is only to offer comfort and support to another in a similar circumstance.
It’s too soon for the victims of Hurricane Sandy to come to terms with the trauma they have experienced. It is a process that takes time, but just as buildings will rise up out of the rubble, so too will those who dare to embrace life again, find the meaning and purpose in all they have lost. Those that meet the challenge will find a reason and a way to carry the experience back into the world, and both they and the world will be a better place as a result. Tragedy and misfortune has much to teach us and we will always have much to learn.
