Categories: uncategorized
Date: 13 September 2008 01:13:02
If something happens to pull back Hurricane Ike's hand just a little --
Say, a bit of high/drier pressure weather to scalp the top off him, or water cooler than expected as he churns up the Gulf of Mexico --
Then maybe, just maybe, he will be a great big expensive inconvenience, and any deaths that happen because of Ike will be conveniently easy to forget or blame on controllable factors.
You know, like maybe he killed 20 instead of his potential several hundred, and those 20 were... Horribly unfortunate due to poverty. Or perhaps they were stupid. Or maybe they were whacked by a freak tornado spawned by a freak weather condition out in Ike's skirts, even as they attempted to evacuate.
And therefore we can shove the idea of a hurricane's destruction to the back of our minds and merrily continue on our way in life.
And of course fewer will evacuate next time, even if they are not held back by depleted finances.
We are blessed every year with disasters not fulfilling their full potential, and we are lulled by that into remaining where we are, where we love to live, where we're used to living.
We are consoled within our own minds into not making the sacrifices -- sometimes horrible sacrifices, true, equivalent to a trapped animal chewing its own foot off -- sacrifices it would take to enable us to move somewhere "safer". We control what factors in life that we can, some factors of time and place, and make ourselves feel we're in a safe place.
Which is a non-existent place, of course. Even some few factors you can control, factors of your own behavior, or choices of where you live within the parameters your income allows, will not help you when an Ike comes along at full strength, or an earthquake hits, or a prairie fire/canyon fire roars at you.
Or when a meteor strikes, or when a randomly insane person decides your queue at the tamale cart would be a good one to take out with his 1978 Impala.
So we do what we can, and we don't do what we think we cannot, having weighed the factors involved and having found them too grievous to take on for the sake of a little more safety. And we get all fatalistic about what we can't change.
All of life is a gamble. You find your meaning in service, in expression of your talents (whatever they may be). Hopefully you do that within the circle of the arms of the Good Lord.