It’s a couple of weeks since the storm; less since the snow. And it’s a gloomy, drizzly day. Many neighborhoods are cleaned up. Some have a long way to go. I’m finding a lot of gloom in the people I speak to as well. Cab drivers, strangers on the bus, friends are all sharing disaster stories. Most of these are not personal. They’re about people we’ve seen on television or read about. Some are about friends and family. Few are about personal loss.
What all these story-tellers have in common is a feeling of frustration and loss without any feeling of being entitled to feel this way. It’s an odd sort of depression – and maybe a degree of PTSD. It’s hard to not think of earlier catastrophes – all those people trying to recover in Breezy Point are also living in the shadow of the plane crash ten years ago. Homes that survived that have now been leveled. Many who lost their homes and belongings are the bedroom communities that sent loved ones off to work in the World Trade Center. And now this.
We think we’ve moved on, but maybe not. After our earthquake experience last year, I noticed something interesting in people’s reactions. In midtown Manhattan, people were making jokes about the experience. One woman on the bus was telling a friend on the phone that yeah, she was buried under a heap of rubble, but she had water, so she was fine. In lower Manhattan, though, people boarding the bus were silent and ashen-faced. Too many memories, even ten years later.
As we try to help those who suffered the direct impact of the storm, we might also take a little time for those on the periphery – including, perhaps, ourselves. We’ve contributed to the funds. Packed up supplies. Donated online. Volunteered. And it doesn’t feel like enough. We can help, but we can’t bring back the little, most important things – the keepsakes, the photos, and in some cases, the loved ones. We’re helpless and many of us are sad.
Sad. And feeling like that’s wrong. What, some of us are asking, do I have to complain about? My problems are so small. There’s something flawed in that logic, though. It’s a little like cleaning your plate as a kid because children in China were starving. How did your finishing the vegetables help those kids? Acknowledge that you are feeling lost and stuck if that’s how you feel.
This is a good time to reach out and help everyone you can. And a good time to be happy about doing that. And to know that you can’t do everything, yet every little bit contributes to the overall rebuilding.
It’s also a good time to take care of yourself. Reach out to your friends who are feeling the way you feel. Be kind to each other. Celebrating the love around you puts more love out into the world. Being happy doesn’t steal happiness away from someone else – it expands the pool of happiness.
