Luck and Courage

“Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength.”

The people in Japan who have survived what appeared, for all intents and purposes, to be hell on earth are exhibiting strength in ways that are never known to us unless we are faced with overwhelmingly bad odds. Courage like theirs began with dumb luck:  They were near a pole or railing when the raging waters swept past or were near a path leading to high ground to which they ran and survived.  After luck left them high and dry, courage and strength emerged.  They will have to hang onto that far longer and harder than they did to the post or rail.  For the Japanese people we're watching on TV, life and death is a whole new game they were thrown into, ready or not.  And the rules are being written on a daily basis.  

I think we'd understand if they all had nervous breakdowns or if they fell apart or sat sobbing and inert for days under all that stress.  This is crushing stress, and the behavior we might be witness to on the daily news may seem inexplicable if you are sitting comfortably within the depths of a cushioned sofa or Barcalounger.  Make no mistake though:  The stress of this disaster and disasters on that scale we have seen at other times is literally forming new neural pathways in the minds and bodies of these survivors so that they will be forever impacted by the experience.   

Nearly all former neural paths that gave rise to movements, thoughts and responses to normal life in their villages and towns prior to the tsunami now need to be replaced - nearly instantaneously - by new ones.  All frames of reference, landmarks, routines are gone.  All of it.  

Think about how much you depend on things being where they are in your familiar home.  Keys?  They're right there.  Gas station?  Four blocks away, thank you, and it's always open from 6 AM to 10 PM.  Food? Four supermarkets within a three-mile radius with every possible luxury stocked for your convenience.  Pretty nifty being safe and sound, eh?  

The survivors are left with a few instincts.  That's it.  Drink water, find food, get warm, find your mother, or find your child.  All frames of reference are shattered and strewn far and wide.  You don't have a toilet   or a bed anymore.  Money? bank? car?  Gone.  Pffft.  

People in those circumstances are only able to behave based on instinct and automatic movements.  The rest is dazed, uncertain and uncoordinated, and it often appears to be nonsensical to observers.  A woman, for instance, was seen taking some items to a recycling bin at a shelter and recycling cans and bottles.  All around her for miles and miles were crumpled heaps of splintered trash and she is going through the motions of recycling.  And it's because she is stunned and shocked by her experience, barely able to function because her mind's neural pathways need to rebuild and renew.  She was nearly in ruins herself, but she was functioning, albeit on a very basic level.  After all, she had survived hell.  

Fate is a cruel hunter in Japan these days.  If there is anything that is obvious, it is courage in a quantity that surpasses the wreckage by a thousandfold.  All that pain and all that sorrow surely affects us all in ways we cannot know.  I only hope that, at the very least, our admiration and respect for their courage affects them in a positive way and gives them further strength as they heal.  

Curiosity: Small Feats of Courage

At the merge zone between wet and dry that we call Asilomar Beach, courage and curiosity did a quiet duet.  The dancers -- a dog, a girl and a dancing woman -- were and curious fearful explorers where the ocean breeze and bright sun played off one another in counterpoint.  Shorebirds looking for tidbits in the sand seemed indifferent but kept their eyes on the dance, a tiny audience that moved about on stilt-like legs at the periphery.

Creatures and people walked or trotted along the shallow water's edge, but in the heart of one small black dog courage and curiosity took hold in equal measure.  He was a runner, a dog whose body built speed quickly and stretched out with long beautiful strides as he went after his bright orange ball.  The ball, thrown by his master far down the beach, barely kept ahead of the dog who stretched his body out straight with the effort of each stride.  Then, with the ball caught, he would slow, taking a dozen more strides to reach full stop, and then galloped back with the ball in his jaws.  He was a canine athlete, exceptional in his running ability, and we stopped to watch.

The master had a throwing tool popular at the beach, and the dog was eager to go.  The throw was long again and the dog launched himself into a reckless run, bound to catch the devil ball as soon as he possibly could.  But this time the ball arched out over and then into the ocean water's heaving swells, and it became immediately apparent that the dog was not a swimmer.  He had no idea that the water would only go up to his chest and no further. His perspective only allowed for the fact that there was no firm ground on which to stand where the ball was and that he saw it plain as day, bobbing in the surf.

He trotted to and fro, glancing at his master and then eyeing the ball intently.  It may as well have been on the moon.  Where before he had had the heart to run to tomorrow and back to retrieve his ball, he was undone by the fear of water.  He trotted in up to his elbows and retreated, anxious to get to the ball but held as if by a leash.  The master and his friends walked up and encouraged the black dog to go out, go on, you can do it, but it did no good.  His eyes were locked on the ball, but fear had a firm lock on him.

We looked in the opposite direction to the north end of the beach.  A strong young man walked out into the wide shallows where rippling remnants of waves lapped at his ankles and calves.  He carried his little girl whose hair lifted on the luffing breeze, and her arms were loosely hung around his shoulder.  When you are two and carried up high, the world takes on a very different dimension.  She was carried by her striding father far out into an endless ocean, where she lost reference points and did not understand the new liquid dimension before her.

He bent over and showed her the rippling surface and the shallow sandy bottom, held her out like a little airplane and let her examine the water for a long time.  He let her down low to dip her toes in.  She was having none of it, no sir.  She curled up like a pillbug and refused to touch the wet coldness.  She was interested, curious to know about the ocean, but she always curled up her legs and avoided the final knowledge through touch.  It was far too big and uncertain for her to cope with, not at all like her bath at home.

A dome-like sandbar had formed offshore, a hundred yards long and a hundred yards out beyond a lagoon-like area of rippling tidal movement.  A young woman waded steadfastly out to the sandbar and stood there looking for all the world like Christ walking on water.  The sandbar was partially submerged, just deep enough to have wavelets wash across its surface but only ankle high on the young woman.  She trotted back and forth out there, thrilled apparently with the unusual sand formation and the vantage point that it afforded.  She danced and twirled and stooped to look for things.

The small girl watched her from her own perch in her father's strong arms and looked down at the water.  She pointed to it and he swooped her down again, an airplane girl with wide wings.  She reached for the water and touched it with her fingertips and then was swooped up again, smiling.  A sailboat rounded the point to the north and bent to leeward as it sailed south.  The man with his daughter held snugly watched it with shaded eyes.  The white sail was full and taut and cut a fine figure as it moved across their view.

The black dog waited until the tide brought the devilish ball closer in.  Then he timed its rise on a small swell with a quick lean farther out over the water and snapped it up in his mouth and turned to hear the applause from his people who were still gathered behind him on the firm sand.  The shorebirds skittered away and continued their hunt while the ocean moved making burbling sounds everywhere.