The Sky is Falling

Last Friday was a weird day. It began with a phone call at 7:15 am from my mother saying, "I don't know if you have the national news on..." The last time she did that it was about the same time of day on 9/11/01, so I was a little weirded out. This time she went on to say, "A plane crashed in Clarence Center and I wanted to let you know that we're okay." It was a mile from their house.

Along with watching a fair amount of CNN that morning, I watched myself. I noticed what I was and wasn't thinking and feeling, and my reactions to the fact that I was thinking and feeling what I was or wasn't.

It was: shocking, exciting, cool, interesting, sad - kind of in that order. I couldn't help but wonder if there was something wrong with me for putting sad at the bottom and exciting near the top. I was also aware of my emotional distance from the circumstances. Although I was all of these things, I was never very much of any of them.

Some conclusions I have drawn:

• Despite our best intentions, we are all nascent gawkers at heart. Curiosity is an important human trait and crucial to our survival as individuals and as a species, we just have to remember to have manners.
  
• It is easy to be conditioned to believe that you must feel sad/bad/glad on behalf others, or you are cold, unfeeling or indifferent to the well-being of others. Tragedy can be acknowledged without enmeshment.
• Tragic circumstances are generally an excuse for us to indulge ourselves in drama. Drama is an addiction that feeds on itself and off the indulgences of others, and tragedies are great justifications for throwing ourselves into it head first.
  
• Disasters have a coolness to them that it is okay for us to acknowledge. Pyroclastic flow from a volcano is nightmarish (currents of hot gas and rock which travel at speeds as great as 450 mi/h, at temperatures of about 1,000˚C), but as any 8 year old boy will admit, incredibly cool. Acknowledging the coolness does not detract from the tragedy. It is, among other things, a way of being comfortable our lack of control over circumstances.

I will admit that it took me a couple of days to understand that my distance, and my ability to observe and question my actions and reactions, was something I should see as an accomplishment of sorts. It is a measure of "skillfullness" in relationship to my goals of experiencing greater equanimity. I strive not to be Chicken Little.