12 ZEROS

There is nothing I can say that hasn’t been said better, by someone smarter, more knowledgable than I. But nothing is more human than ‘Story’. For me to process both the way I feel and what I know, I need narrative: I need to frame story from my own experience. Sometimes my stories are meant to be shared and other times, it’s all about me. In this case I’m not sure which; we’ll see. 

A week after landfall, Hurricane Harvey has generated nearly 20 trillion gallons of rain. How do you reconcile a double digit number with 12 zeros behind it? Most of that deluge is still contained in and around Houston, Texas where property loss and human suffering are compounding like interest on a payday loan. Every news & weather report show new and different accounts of the same story: it won’t be over for a very long time. 

Human nature can be unavoidably obvious and subtly cloaked, all in the same breath. Nothing new about natural disasters, they happen but the world is a big place. Some population somewhere is being devastated one way or another, all the time. The way we react depends on degrees of separation. Tsunamis in Japan and earth quakes in Nepal; suffering and loss were immeasurable. But when viewed from a distance, across borders, cultures, religions and languages; if we give more than a passing thought it is of course about “those poor folks” but more about “thank goodness it wasn’t here.” In either case, I am unaware of any spontaneous efforts to raise money or send aid to Asian victims of nature’s wrath.

If we don’t love or know someone ravaged by Harvey we certainly know someone who does. Sympathy is one thing, empathy is another: their pain is our pain. Twelve years ago, Katrina touched me by only one degree of separation. I can’t forget the sense of helplessness and the overwhelming burden of shoveling mud out of the house, into the street; removing worthless jetsam, once treasured, reduced to toxic rubbish?  Then, after you have literally spent yourself in that grueling ordeal, how do you start life over? I don’t think it’s about choices or free will, I think it’s inherent, programmed into every cell in the body. We are compelled to find food and rest, we move and do rather than lie down and give up. At the end of the week or the month, I had a place to go, high and dry, in a community with a strong economy and functioning infrastructure, removed from the chaos. 

I identify somewhat with the protagonist in Stephen Crane’s novel, “The Red Badge Of Courage”. Henry Fleming was not a hero in any sense. Still by proximity and coincidence he prospered from the carnage. I have a real, personal experience with wind, flood and human tragedy but I didn’t have to bear its weight. That hurricane-disaster story is being replayed in Houston the same way a Broadway musical is recast and taken on tour, city to city, decades after its first performance. We know it will happen but pray it will be somewhere else, to people we don’t know. 

News media, being what it is, gives us a scripted account that emphasizes devastation and glorifies human resiliance. It draws high ratings and tells the story we want to hear. Instinct serves us well when the tribe is under siege. Media stresses the nobility of selfless individuals and to some extent I agree. But that collective, altruistic response, expressed by individuals is deeply rooted in our common genetics. We don’t make the decision; it makes us. 

I have no skin in this game. I feel the pain because we have tribal ties and I’ve seen for myself. There are plenty of individuals and organizations in motion, moving to assist and provide for those people in need. There is nothing significant that I can do now. But six months or a year from now, when the news has moved on to some other crisis there will be opportunity. An old man can be the extra hands and eyes that someone in south Texas needs. I did that in ’07 in Waveland, Mississippi after Katrina. There was still plenty of work to do, plenty of people who needed help. I don’t have a plan but I trust, something will come together. The fact that I think about it, that I want to do something is more about meeting my own need than about how it will serve someone else. 

I’ve been reading Yuval Harari’s book, Sapiens; A Brief History of Humankind. He makes the point that; “It is an inevitable rule of history that what seems obvious in hindsight is impossible to predict beforehand.” So I will keep putting my best foot forward in the hope that something good comes of it.