June 1st means the official start of Hurricane Season, where I live in Florida. It’s unusual to experience one before August, but the hype certainly starts to ramp up now. “It’s going to be a very active hurricane season! Be prepared!” Billboards, stores, ads, radio, TV….it’s everywhere around us, encouraging us to ‘get scared, get stressed, and spend a lot of money’ protecting our homes, making evacuation plans, and preparing for a worst case scenario and long power/water outages. It’s a lot to think about, and Hurricane Ian in 2022 jolted this community into taking hurricane season a bit more seriously than in the more distant past.
I’m still fairly new to property ownership in Florida, and therefore somewhat vulnerable to the hurricane hype. This morning, I had a carpenter-friend stop by to discuss ideas for protecting my many older windows. He encouraged me to consider doing much more than I was planning on. I felt my nervous system juggling with this idea (more decisions, more work, more money)…and then, after a few phone calls revealed the challenges with getting help with it in a timely way now that the season is already in gear…I knew it was time for a sit-down with my journal!
A few thoughtful paragraphs of self-talk later, and I was re-grounded. I fully saw and felt the connection between this high-drama and all the others which have been ramped up lately (pandemics, wars, poisoned food, climate change, shady elections, etc.). Our challenge in living consciously, is to transmute all the fear-mongering into real, usable wisdom (and, of course, to discard all that is not even worthy of taking up any space in our mind at all!).
As I wrote in my journal about it, I noticed the various parts of me bubbling to the surface intermittently. The perfectionist part, the fearful part, the overwhelmed part, the shameful part, the strong and capable one, the practical one, the wise and loving one, the one who has faith. And I quite literally asked the unhelpful parts to ‘stand down,’ and clear the way for the capable, practical, wise, loving and faith-based parts to take the lead here.
It’s a great method for meeting anxiety and overwhelm - write it out, notice where it’s coming from (outer and inner sources), and recognize the folly and futility of letting it take the driver’s seat. My practical part knows it’s worth making some investment in protecting my biggest investment (my home) from flying debris (which is a certainty in these parts, sooner or later). She also knows my finances, and the reality of the size of the job if I were to install coverings on every single window within the next month or so. The shameful part attempted to shame me for not starting sooner, but she was put to rest by the wise and loving one who knows to focus in the present moment, and decide on the tasks at hand, taking do-able steps one at a time to move forward.
My wise one can see that I’d rather invest a bit more in solutions that are long-lasting and easier to manage on my own (such as permanently installed window shutters that you just close for a storm, vs. bolting huge heavy sheets of plywood up before each storm). A middle way would be lightweight and strong polycarbonate sheets that mount and store fairly easily. I will likely end up doing a variety of things, and improving on it each year until I’m satisfied with the level of protection.
So for this season, I will do what I reasonably can and then, as I always do, draw on FAITH. Ultimately, surrender is required, as we are no match for nature’s raw strength. We hustled with filling and placing heavy sandbags at the base of all the doors before Ian, and nature simply shoved them out of her way and busted the door bolts when she wanted to push water through the porch of our rental cottage. Since all the water rushed right through and out the other end, no major harm was done and the porch recovered quickly. We were very fortunate to experience minimal structural damages from Ian (other than to our trees). I have many friends whose homes sustained severe damages. I have chosen to live in this area, and hurricanes are one of the risks that come with the territory.
This brings me around to thinking about all the catastrophizing and future-fear-focusing that is ongoing around us in the world today. What do you do to shield yourself from its potential psychological ravages? The best strategy I’ve found is to acquire real knowledge about the situation; decide on a rational, practical strategy for my own response and start putting it into practice; surrender to what is beyond my control (including what other people decide to do for themselves); and cultivate faith in a much bigger picture in which all is well.
On the world stage, it’s been clear to me for a long time that fear is being weaponized in an attempt to get us to be compliant and easily manipulated, by those who pretend to be in control. I feel my anger about this, especially at times when I see the harm it’s doing to people I love, but mostly I have realized that the best approach is to harness my energy toward doing my best to continue to live my truth, and to keep speaking out openly in the hope that more people will awaken to the level of lies we are constantly being fed by those who need to maintain the illusion that they are the ones with all the knowledge and power.
I do have a healthy respect now for the amount of disruption, disease, death and chaos this weaponized fear can create, just as I have a healthy respect for the sheer power of nature in a hurricane. In both cases, it’s most important to also maintain a healthy respect for our own capacity to rise strong, to learn what we need to learn to empower ourselves, to call on our inner wisdom and resilience, and to know intimately our faith in a higher power to take care of that which we cannot.
Dear Ellen -- Thanks for the practical and effective advice for maintaining emotional balance and sustained functionality amid a storm of "media madness", fear and cognitive dissonance! Calmly prepare for the worst as much as possible, but enjoy your present moments of delight and friendship wherever they can be found --- I remember once when I was in Vieques Puerto Rico and a huge storm was uprooting palm trees that were whizzing past our house....I noticed a tiny hummingbird snuggled safely under a piece of hardware holding the window coverings on one side of the house. I often think of that little bird....Also during that particular storm, it was said that the herd of "wild horses" the island is famous for, went to one central location--a small lake with fresh spring water...and far from the terrific storm lashing the shore areas. Instincts saved these beautiful creatures. I heard from folks that had lived there a long time that the horses suffered few deaths from the storm.
Thanks Ellen ! - Love your journaling process and how that helps bring inner peace and clarity. We have somewhat similar concerns here in California as we now are entering into "fire season" and it's great to cultivate both outer preparedness and inner harmony - On this Earth we are all fiddlers on the roof...