What Are You So Afraid Of?

As you may have heard, the Mid-Atlantic US (in which I currently live) got hammered by a massive snowstorm this weekend.  Weather reports had been sensationalizing the potentially apocalyptic effects of the storm for days, warning that we could see a record snowfall and complete paralysis of city functions.  And if you doubt that people still take the media seriously, you should have been in any east coast grocery store on Thursday night: everything was wiped out.

Saturday morning, Ann and I awoke to the full brunt of the destruction.

Rufus needed his morning walk, and there was no way around it: we had to go outside.  Armed with a shotgun, a lantern and a blowtorch, we opened our front door with a mix of soul-rending trepidation and a sudden resurgence in our childhood beliefs in God — because when the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse arrive wearing ski masks, you can never be too careful.

Amazingly, all the buildings on our block were still standing.  The cars had not caved in beneath the mountains of precipitation.  There were no sirens, no wailing children trapped beneath the rubble, and no marauding gangs of anarchists raping and pillaging the survivors.

So we dug a little walkway midway down the block so Rufus would have a place to poop.

Then we went back inside, and we turned on the news, and IT WAS INSANE.  Somehow, the same morning news anchors who are on TV every week had managed to get to the station!  Neither of them looked like they’d had to cannibalize their loved ones in order to get out of the house. In fact, one of them was laughing at a picture someone had sent in of a dog in a snowsuit.

HOW WAS MASS COMMUNICATION STILL WORKING??? WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE PARALYZED!!!

Too confused to function, we went back to bed, mostly to conserve our strength in case we needed to light flares on the rooftop later and help guide the evacuation planes.

But by noon, we once again ventured outside (this time with only a pistol and a hatchet, in case we needed to run) and discovered that our neighbors were not only not dead or eating their own young, but they were shoveling out their stairways, sidewalks and cars.  They were even talking to each other, which never happens.

By this afternoon, a full 24 hours after we were supposed to have borne witness to the final sub-arctic battle between good and evil, Ann and I were digging our car out from its snow tomb and romping in the park with our dog.  Other neighbors were sharing shovels and helping one another chip away at their icy vehicles or sidewalks.  Our next-door neighbors, who never speak to us, even managed to find the time to blatantly ignore us while walking past us!

If they have time to be petty and vindictive over perceived slights, how much of an Armageddon could this possibly be?

And that’s when it hit me:

We got through it.

The world was supposed to have ended (at least by modern meteorological standards), but it didn’t.  Somehow, despite all advertised odds, we were all still functional.  One guy was even going to work, which is as American as you can get during a crisis of biblical proportions.

And that got me thinking…

The country was supposed to have collapsed during eight years of Bush tyranny.  But we got through it.

The country could have collapsed during our current financial meltdown.  But we’re getting through it.

And Obama could still turn this nation into a socialist collective, unless the GOP outwits him and turns it into a fascist dictatorship first.  But we’ll probably get through that too.

In fact, there’s never been anything that’s happened in this country — and, in broader terms, on this planet — that the bulk of us haven’t gotten through.

Yes, we’ve had disasters and war and terror and plagues and homicides and genocides and secessions and depressions.  Yes, we’ve been inconvenienced and had to sacrifice.  Yes, we’ve abused and taken advantage of.  And yes, we’ve been trained to believe that things can only ever get worse.

And yet, regardless of what life throws at us, we’ve always gotten through it.

Which, finally, makes me wonder one last thing…

What If We Didn’t Spend Our Entire Lives Worrying About “What Might Happen?”

If we weren’t always petrified about rain, snow and murder, our local news would have to find something else to report.

If we weren’t entirely convinced that one of our political parties was going to drive our 200-years-young nation to ruin, our national news (and, perhaps, our politicians) would have to find something more useful to do.

And if we weren’t perpetually preoccupied with our immediate concerns about our own health, wealth, relationships and social standing, we might actually find the energy to move forward in the direction we’re so certain someone or something “out there” is preventing us from reaching.

In the end, what prevents us from being amazed at our own resiliency is just how commonplace the act of survival really is.  The world isn’t perfect, and neither are we, but we always manage to find a way to scrape by — and sometimes, we even make the future better than the past we grew up in.

Just ask your parents, or your grandparents, or anyone who’s fled to where you’re living now from a homeland they simply couldn’t bear to live in anymore; they’ll tell you that tomorrow has at least a 50% chance of being better than today, and unlike we modern cynics, they’ll believe it.

And if tomorrow happens to be worse than today?  Trust me:

We’ll get through it.

Tags: America, Armchair Sociology, baltimore, bullshit, common sense, history, inspiration, news, perception, Pittsburgh, tv