The Spirit Within the Tsunami

One can't keep a blog without touching on what's happening in Japan.  Japan is surely touching back.  Images etched in the mind.  The cries firmly planted in the heart.  An earthquake as a singular disaster is plenty earth-shattering enough.  No pun intended.  A tsunami in and of itself -- an event of catastrophic proportions.  But the coupling of two such phenomena, levied upon a nation not moored to a continental land mass, an island unto itself, dense with humanity, almost defies comprehension.  Almost.

I say almost because, as Michelle Kosinski of NBC news so practically and profoundly stated during a story on The Today Show this morning, "that is the power of nature . . . and it has to be believeable to us . . . especially since we as humans are drawn to live, by the millions, right along the edges of oceans and fault lines."  She was referring to a dramatic video footage montage culled from online posts shot by firsthand witnesses.  Images of city streets rapidly filling with debris-strewn rising waters.  People stranded on bridges as avenues transform into rivers: many of them separated from danger by only the merest of inches and feet.  The suddenness of nature, the way in which what is -- especially those things created by the hands of men -- violently and abruptly becomes what was, stupefies the mind.  Our ability to absorb such a wide scope of instant and permanent change stretches to the breaking point.  But we must remain elastic in our acceptance.

Whether it be thunderstorms, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, or volcanoes, that fact that humanity is not alone on this spinning planet of natural forces can not, and should not, be denied.  Forgotten.  Pushed to the back of the shelf.  To do so reeks of recklessness, ignorance, and folly.  To do do means we turn our backs on the facts of history and expect the present to perform differently than it will, than it should.  For all of our planning and emergency drills and rescue practices, most people selfishly harbor at their core a fantasy belief that it won't happen to them.  This is the simplest of ironies, as such thoughts are at once a personal safety mechanism which allows each of us to continue our lives, surrounded by our possessions and trappings, AND a guarantee that we will be rocked when, and if, aforementioned items are ripped from our lives.  But we seem to be nothing if not conundrums.

The still picture in my mind, that lasting image of a tragedy which finds a way to permanently imprint on the psyche for the remainder of ones life as a reminder of a powerful moment, comes from one of those shaky cell phone videos I saw on my television early this morning.  A torrent of onrushing ocean invading homes and tall buildings fills the screen before cutting to a mother and daughter in the midst of a larger group of people huddled atop a bridge.  Sounds of car alarms and splitting trees mingle with the whoosh of the upsurge, with the shouts of citizens helpless to do anything.  All of it is a crazy cocktail of catastrophe.  Suddenly, the daughter, a girl of perhaps nine or ten, screams in fear.  Her tight round face, her pink jacket, her abject confusion, they punch me in my gut.  In a movement more hurried than the approach of the surging sea below her, the mother grabs her child, covering the girl's ears and pulling the girl's head into the safety of her belly.  As if her daughter could again be that innocent and protected baby, enveloped in the soothing waters of amniotic fluid, afloat in a non-hostile environment, far from this brutal reality.  The moment passes within the frame of a heartbeat.

But the mother within me continues to press the sweet face of that scared little girl into the comfort of my own womb though it alters nothing. I understand that what she has witnessed will shape her perceptions and mold her years with an awareness and purpose which can possibly improve lives and benefit her country and our world.  She has glimpsed the face of that which is real and true, stripped of all ornamentation and deception.  The validity of life, raw and unedited, has crashed into her world and all will be different.  Hopefully, all will be better.  Like those of us who share in her shock and sorrow, mourn her losses, rejoice in her survival, and choose to believe in the powers beyond our ken, she will rebuild with her eyes wide open.

In the final analysis, that is the key.  Everything we own, hold dear, love, value, and cherish, can be shaken from our grip, washed from our homes, swooped up and away from sight, but the physical realm is a solid.  And a solid can not strip us of our spirit.  We can own other belongings, develop love and affection for other people, attach value to new bank accounts.  We can even reinvent ourselves if need be.  Nonetheless, the spirit of every man, woman, and child, subsists above and beyond the fray.  It need not be contained or crushed, harnessed or hammered.  Feed it.  Trust it.  Grow it.  Allow it the freedom to expand beyond the borders we insist upon erecting in the face of natural and supernatural forces.  Then, our shock can surrender to acceptance, and surviving will step aside for thriving.

No active fault line or wall of angry water can take that away from any of us.  Unless we let it.