- and turned it off feeling re-aligned, having had the two life choices about preparing for happiness or simply being happy now - placed squarely in front of us. We were going to be the ones in the film playing the harmonica when chaos abounds, taking the elevator down from an unsatisfying job and not coming back up. If you haven't seen the movie, do -- it resonates with a struggle that has been going on in America for nearly a century. Plus, I don't think you can have too much Jimmy Stewart in your life.We turned it off, ready for bed, when amazing footage flashed across the screen. Pristine squares of carefully tended farmland and rows of neat little homes were being ungulfed by silent, calm waters. Like toys in a bathtub, cars and trucks and silos and airplanes swirled in tidal pools. It was so different from watching the destruction of a hurricane, which shakes its fists and curses and kicks the door at you. The tsunami didn't seem to have anything against the land or people. It was simply following the rules of nature, simply doing what water is supposed to do. As we watched this spectacle on live television, we realized that this gently flowing mass of water was taking lives as we watched from our living room. There was silence from the television, but somewhere in that mass of destruction, someone was crying, screaming, gasping. What a helpless feeling to sit and watch from your couch with a bowl of popcorn next to you.
Yesterday on NPR, I listened to a first responder talk about the calmness of the Japanese people during this tragedy. "Is there still mass chaos?" the interviewer asked. "Oh, chaos isn't how I would describe it" the responder replied. "People are orderly, calm, patient, obviously devastated - but following rules and order and being just - well, very patient." I recalled the words of my Georgian mentor in Peace Corps after her own country was torn apart by civil war and the country had shut down its banks, lost its power, its water source, its gas lines -- and mass poverty and hysteria resulted. "In a disaster, everything shows" she said. People who, until that time, had been normal and good citizens - began stealing earrings right out of the ears of women if they looked valuable enough to take, while others began opening their doors to others, even if they had very little to give. Everything that is inside a person comes to light. If you are a hero, it will emerge. If you are selfish, that will come out too.
Then, I remembered Hurricane Katrina. I think that that disaster gave me an opportunity to see both sides of my own soul. I evacuated first to College Station and crawled into bed at my dear friends' home, considering my situation. In the morning, my friend Ginger tapped on the door and said, "Leslie, the levees have breached." I turned on the television and saw those now iconic images of New Orleaneans slogging down Canal Street, belongings on their back, and was aghast. My heart broke at the sight of the Superdome. But as the day wore on and the coverage turned to the looting and violence that was taking place, I am embarrassed to admit that my compassion turned into shame and disgust. I had recently had some incidents in New Orleans that had hardened my heart to some of the people in New Orleans, and let's be honest - this was the poor, black population. (I had been chased down the street by a crazy woman who had taken her shoes off and was threatening to hit me with them for no apparent reason, I had been harrassed by a masturbating man in his car near my house, and a car of teenagers had thrown stuff at me while running.) And here they were looting. And then here they were, on their rooftops with their misspelled signs. I was sorry for them, but I also felt a sense of justice that the very people who had terrified me, were now terrified. My heart hurts now, remembering the ugliness of my reaction. But, I'd like to be honest. My sense of entitlement reigned supreme.
By the end of the day, it was apparent that my work and schooling at Tulane University would be cancelled indefinitely, so I hatched out three plans for what to do with myself:
1. Go to Colorado and run the Boulder marathon, which I had trained for, then find work and play and just wait it out.
2. Go to the Harvard School of Public Health, who had extended an offer for me to attend, and get a head start on my schooling.
3. Work for Emergency Corps, a branch of Peace Corps that had set up in New Orleans to respond to the disaster. They too had offered me a place within their organization.
I considered each carefully. And I chose option #2. I attended Harvard for one semester of my life and had an incredible experience living in Jamaica Plain, spending my days studying at Harvard and my evenings sipping cappuccinos in the Italian north end. I got a boyfriend, ran the New Hampshire marathon, and just had a jolly good time. Everything shows. I still regret that I did not choose option #3.
When I say that "everything shows" -- I don't mean that because the people in Japan are calm and orderly and the people in New Orleans were hysterical, this means that one population is superior to another and we should cathect one and and despise the other. What is inside -- your internal resources -- are not something you should be praised for having or blamed for not having. Maybe the Japanese patience and order comes from the confidence in their government to take care of them, which the New Orleaneans lost when the government failed to respond, day after day. And maybe the looting and violence that took in New Orleans was out of a lifetime of desperation of not-having, or maybe it was because that internal voice of what's wrong and what's right had not been sufficiently developed. I'm not going to judge. When we are given the opportunity to view our internal resources, the state of our souls, we can note if we feel that we have an abundance from which we can give to others, or whether we feel a dearth, a need to take from others.
To have the former, I believe, is to have true wealth. And those without it should not be blamed, but provided for with compassion and grace.
