As regular readers know, I have lived my whole life in Florida … and I love it here. It’s completely weird and wacky but it is also beautiful, warm, and comforting. It’s home to me and mine.
Like everywhere in the world, we have our weather issues, boy do we have weather issues! Rain, lots and lots of rain, tornadoes, heat, and hurricanes. We are so connected to our hurricanes that we are on a first name basis with them! You may be familiar with some of them: Katrina, Michael, and Ivan to name a few. We have them every summer - the earth heats up, the ocean heats up, the rain starts, the wind arrives and before you know it you are hauling everything into the garage (yard furniture, bird feeders, potted plants), buying cases of water and candles, and battening-down-the-hatches.*
*Wiktionary defines this as “a practice aboard a ship of sealing hatches to prevent water getting below-decks in a storm by using covers secured by strips of material, called battens, firmly attached to the frame of the hatch opening.”
While I live in a house, not on a ship, the expression still applies because there is water everywhere - before, during, and after a hurricane! In Florida and the southern U.S. it is just what we do.
Here’s what I have learned from hurricanes, storms, awful events, pandemics, and whatever-the-crisis-of-the-day happens to be:
As humans, we seem to be at our best when we are faced with challenges. Why is that?
Are we scared? Or is it because we are all in the same boat? Or is it because we really do care about one another?
The optimist in me feels it is because we really do care about one another. Call me naive, innocent, or just plain stupid but I believe in the goodness in people. I truly believe in others and their ability to be good and do good. I believe we all share that feeling of “we’re all in this together.”
It is hard to see the positive sometimes, like now, when the world is in the middle of a pandemic called CO-VID19. I’ve seen and heard lots of weird stuff: hoarding toilet paper, fights over paper towels, and a guy with 17,000 bottles of hand sanitizer (that’s just weird).
People do strange things when they are scared and there are lots of reasons for that, from being raised by ineffective adults to mental illness to everything in between. Sometimes the world just scares the crap out of us and we don’t remember how to be rational - it is the cost of being alive. The cost of being alive is expensive in every way possible.
In addition to the odd behaviors I’ve also heard amazing stories of kindness, resilience, and generosity now and during every storm life has given us. For some reason, those good stories get pushed far behind the awful stories. Maybe we could all push them out in front and make the world a bit happier during hard times because we could all use a smile, a laugh, or a wave from a friend (especially during social distancing).
Want to read about more happy stories? Me too! Here’s where you can find them:
After Hurricane Michael, we were without electricity for about 8 days. We lost all of the food in our refrigerator and freezer. As I was cleaning out the ruined gunk I found this bottle of vodka in my freezer. Like a light in the darkness, it appeared and put a smile on my face! Sometimes the good is right in front of you and you have to laugh :-)
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