Where do we go from here? Finding a direction in difficult times ...
Last time I was kidding around, but now it's no longer a joke. The world is indeed going to hell in a handbasket. We have a massive, beyond imagining, natural disaster on our hands in this country. The costs are not even close to being known as yet, whether measured in human life or financial impact. The nation staggers in attempting to understand the scope of the disaster -- and meanwhile, we have a war on our hands in Iraq. And that country as well, today, has suffered losses beyond imagining. So, where do we go from here? ******************************** When I was a young engineer, I once showed up at work quite distraught over a family crisis. It was a situation beyond my control, but something that was causing me a great deal of grief. My boss at the time was a man who had endured war and loss in his youth, and was therefore someone who knew a few things about carrying on in the face of overwhelming despair. He knew of my distress and suddenly appeared at my desk holding a calculus book. As I have written about before, he handed the book to me and suggested I work through a few problems at the back of each chapter. He said that he had always found that kind of mental exercise to be calming in times of great trouble. After all these years, I think he was actually quite right. Sometimes there are situations that develop that are just so overwhelming, so beyond grasping, that the best one can do to cope, is just to sit down and do something simple, rational and accessible, something that can be solved with a pencil and paper, something that is trivial in its significance, but profound in its ability to sooth. This evening would be such a moment. I simply cannot understand how the entire Gulf Coast is going to be rebuilt. You look at those pictures, at the panoramic views of destruction, and you can't imagine that the place can be restored. Ever. But -- you and I know that people will prevail. They will move forward, inch by inch, year by year, and within my lifetime those places will be viable again. The barges will move, the oil will be pumped, the casinos will be lit, homes will be built and occupied, cities and counties will once again have commerce, transportation, and community. Normal life, in all its eccentric expressions, will return. Looking at the pictures of the devastation along the Gulf Coast, it's easy to say: "Oh for heaven's sakes, why weren't they prepared?? Or even more so, why did they build there in the first place?? What's a whole city doing below sea level??" Those are really stupid questions coming from someone who was born and raised in and around San Francisco. After all, for us here in the Bay Area, when -- not if, but when -- the next Big One hits in this place where all of us own homes and have raised our families within a handful of miles of the most infamous earthquake fault in the world -- when that happens, people elsewhere will look at the pictures, the film, the news reports and they will say, "Oh for heavens sakes! Why did they build there?? Why did they insist on constructing an entire community in a place that was destined to destruction?? What is a whole city doing straddling a fault line??" Well, I'll tell you what we're doing here. We're living our lives. Pursuing our educations. Housing, feeding, and nurturing our children. Attending to our elderly. Engaging in sports. Going to the library. Going to work. Sleeping, eating, jogging. Calling this place home. When the earthquake comes, we will cope. And we will rebuild. And we will move one. An 'earthquake' has hit the Gulf Coast -- and it's a Big One. In fact, it's Monstrous. The losses are indeed staggering. There will be no consoling those families who have lost everything, particularly those families who have lost loved ones. But time will heal those communities. The grief will lessen. People will pick up their hammers and their courage and they will rebuild in the place that they know and love. That's just how it works. That's how it worked here in 1906. That's how it will work there in 2005. Eventually normal life will return to the Gulf Coast. And someday -- and who knows how long it will take -- normal life will return to Iraq as well. Someday the world will be a different place. And when it is, it will be the same as it has always been. A place where optimism trumps despair and the future is full of promise. And that, my friends, is where we go from here. ********************************Here is just one place to start if you want to research ways to donate to the Gulf Coast relief effort: ********************************
Peggy Aycinena owns and operates EDA Confidential. She can be reached at peggy@aycinena.com |