With Hurricane Irene miraculously veering away from Florida but unfortunately careening STRAIGHT towards where my family in NY is, I started thinking about natural disasters and how they relate to life.
Hate me if you want to, but I’m completely fascinated by natural disasters. The power and immensity of any kind of earthquake, hurricane, tornado, tsunami or whatever nature throws at us is pretty spectacular. There’s something about the chaos and destruction that just makes me sit back and think about how small we really are. And once one is coming, you really can’t do anything to stop it.
You can only try to save yourself.
Expect the unexpected
The weather station says the eye of the hurricane is supposed to veer away from the coast. It might graze the east coast of your state (where you’re conveniently located) but they’re about 99.99% sure that it’ll go to the west and a crisis will be avoided. Now, ignoring the fact that this is a weatherman and pretty much never right about anything, these statistics are pretty favorable to it missing you. Keyword “favorable.”
So what happens when little miss hurricane decides “Oh! NYC looks like it’ll be fun to hit today, and the warm surface water and moist air are PERFECT conduits to carry me right onto land. I’ve never been on land before. This should be fun. What the hell. NYC is for lovers. I wanna be on it.”
So now you decided not to purchase storm shutters (do we even know what that is in NY? I sure as hell didn’t know where to find any and I lived there for over 10 years of my life) and you’ve stocked up on beer instead of water because HEY a fake hurricane party sounds fun when you’re about to avoid danger by the skin of your teeth.
And then… the hurricane makes landfall right in your home town. Now what? Did you prepare?
You’re never fully prepared
This goes along with “expect the unexpected.”
The hurricane is on its way. You KNOW it’s coming. You’re out trying to buy every possible water bottle pack possible and shoving your cart with canned goods that won’t go bad when the disaster hits. But guess what. You get home and realize you don’t have a flashlight or candles. What are you going to do? You remember the back of your Jeep ha a built in flashlight you can pop out. You run out there in the whipping winds (or into your garage, wherever you car is) and grab it before the power goes out.
It’s been my experience that you’re never really fully prepared for everything. No matter how hard you try, there’s always going to be SOMETHING that slips through the cracks. But what differentiates a survivor from one who gets left in the dust is the ability to improvise; to shape shift and adapt. When you don’t have what you need, and you’re not prepared, make shit up and get prepared.
Think on your feet.
Improvising is a skill that we all should spend a little more time on.
There’s always something bigger than you
You may have everything under control and moving along how you want. But if there’s anything we can learn from natural disasters, it’s that there’s always something bigger than you. And no, I’m not talking about god (because if you know me well enough, you know I don’t believe in that).
This might be the negative side within me, but in life you can’t think that you’re entitled to things, or deserve things. Just because you give everything you have towards something, nothing guarantees that it’s yours. I’m a pretty positive person but I’ll always believe my previous statement. And that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep trying. It just means that you can’t just sit back and expect to always have what you want handed to you.
Did you have flood insurance? Guess what. You’re probably not actually covered. Did you save money to cover a disaster? No? Well what now? Your neighbor did- he had a big bank account full of emergency money. He wanted to make sure he never had to face the situation you’re facing now. So he expected the unexpected, prepared, and understood that there’s things much bigger than him that take control of his life out of his hands sometimes. And he’s better off than you because even if he can’t fix the damage, he can always find a new house.
There’s always someone who wants it more than you- there’s always something potentially brewing that can stand in the way. But we have to deal with it. Because life isn’t any fun if you know the ending to your path, is it? :) So improvise. Shape shift. Adapt. Who knows where it’ll take you.
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