Freeze

The words are hard to come by this week. I have to admit that it is difficult to watch my fellow Texans not just in pain, but in danger, from nearly 2,000 miles away. That said, I have to first express deep gratitude that my parents, who live in Houston, only lost power for a few hours. Thank God is all I can really say to that. My parents are getting up there (I can hear my Dad now saying that they are not getting up there, they are up there!), My mother in particular has been in a state of compromised health for years now. It’s bad enough that they have been in a state of high risk due to COVID-19, and now this. Also, thankfully, they both recently received their second vaccine shot. So while Texas isn’t quite out of the woods yet, at least they have turned the corner.

You might imagine that I know a whole lot of people in Texas. I do. I haven’t been able to check in with all of them. I know that many were without power and heat for multiple days. Almost all have been without running/potable water and still are. While I haven’t heard any reports from people who I directly know having water damage in their house, I certainly have heard such reports from people with only two degrees of separation, and no doubt I just haven’t heard yet that this has in fact happened to people close to me. This is just to say that my parents were the exception, not the rule. The fallout has been as widespread as anything I have ever seen in Texas… Harvey included. 

One thing that I have found interesting since moving to Vermont is how the persistent trials and tribulations of another place tend to fade into the background. Having spent 50 years of my life in Texas, I know up close and personal what those trials and tribulations are for Texans, and Houstonians in particular. I know the fear and trauma of hurricanes and flooding, of draught, of heat waves, of freezing pipes and roads. I always thought that when such an onslaught was coming that all of my friends who lived elsewhere, indeed people all over the country if not the world, were paying attention and bracing for us out of empathy. 

Now I can say that is only partially true, although it is at least partially true. Yet it is difficult for us to be empathetic to something that is not only so far away, but is also something that we are not and/or have not personally experienced. The human condition in all parts of the world has to respond to challenges, both natural and manmade. There is a certain amount of hardness that comes from just having lived life. It’s the impulse to say “shit happens,” followed by “get over it.” We all have our own lives to attend to, after all. So with our hyper-connectivity, we have what I would call a cursory finger on the pulse of events across the globe. Of course we tend to respond to those that hit closer to home than those that hit on the other side of the globe. 

On the spectrum between fight or flight, I fall squarely on freeze. I mean freeze solid, people. There should be a picture of me next to the explanation of the term “deer in headlights.” I think this is in part because my highly analytical mind is constantly churning an infinite number of scenarios to determine the best course of action (of course combined with a high fear of failure operating in the background). When push comes to shove, I can’t complete the process fast enough to respond in a timely manner. The other part of it has to do with being a highly sensitive person. The inputs themselves can be overwhelming and so deeply emotional that it is hard to to hold. So I freeze instead. 

I have to admit that I feel much safer in a multitude of ways since moving to Vermont, relatively speaking. That isn’t because Vermont doesn’t have its own challenges, it’s because it is consistent in facing them and working hard- and paying the price- to meet them. But I won’t turn this into a political criticism, in spite of the anger that I share with so many of my fellow Texans. I don’t want to invoke the side of me that wants to fry Ted Cruz in the Cancun sun in the face of real, widespread trauma. I have to say here that I am now grateful for our own trauma last Fall. As you may recall, Shannon and I found ourselves in our own situation without power, heat, and water in the face of freezing temperatures for weeks as we desperately scrambled to find a new place to rent for the winter when our first place fell through. I am here to say that the trauma is real. If you haven’t experienced something like this, you can’t even begin to imagine it. I am grateful that I now can. It enables me to be fully empathetic with what Texans are now experiencing. It enables me to stand into it without freezing. 

The thing that we all need to start getting real about is that trauma is being heaped upon trauma. Take Houstonians. Some Houstonians’ houses were flooded in massive flood events in the couple of years leading up to Harvey in 2017, only to have their houses flood again after they had just completed renovations. I literally know people who this happened to. Just going through a hurricane is traumatic, to say nothing of the aftermath. It takes years to get back to normal, and some never recover. Just as Houston was returning to a sense of general normalcy, COVID hits, then social unrest (and remember that George Floyd was a Houstonian), then the Capitol Insurrection, and now this. Nevermind all of the ongoing personal demons that each and every one of us faces. 

Here’s my point: we can’t do this alone. We weren’t designed to. Here’s a bit of straight-talking Texas realness for you: it’s time to drop the rugged individualism bullshit. It’s also time to drop the Us vs. Them bullshit. Any simple observation reveals that none of that is working for anyone. Nor will it. Ever. As I continue to be slow to be reactive, I instead reach for my higher Self. In the process I reach for higher Wisdom, from whatever directions that happens to come. Now that I have set the stage, here are the two things that are speaking to me this week.

The first is Beto, who tirelessly shows up. Nevermind politics. The guy is for real. He is on the ground. He is for everyone at the end, beginning, and middle of every day. Hell, he is for everyone in the middle of the night. Even without an elected position, he is the best leader that Texas has at the moment. If you find yourself empathetic to what Texans are going through right now, consider giving to his fundraising and organizing effort to provide relief:

www.poweredxpeople.org

The next thing is bigger picture than this week’s traumas. This is getting back to that divide between Us vs. Them. We have to heal this divide first and foremost if we have any hopes of surviving, much less thriving. Every single last one of us needs to focus on this. Urgently. I am currently nine chapters into an extraordinary book that I would make every single American read if I could:

Don’t Label Me, by Irshad Manji

Please, please read it. Let’s get on the path together. It’s time we unfreeze and learn to be like flowing water, while accepting that rocks have their rightful place in the world. Want to know what I am talking about? Then read. Wishing you warmth and water wherever you are in the world.