image credit: NASA FIRMS (Fire Information for Resource Management System US/Canada) dated August 21, 2023. US and Canadian wildfires on that date.
The previous column was about taking on a personal change. This week considers those times when change is forced upon you, and how to develop psychological readiness.
It is mid August 2023. Wildfires are burning all across Canada. The map above documents only the out of control fires. Climate change is on our doorstep. If you have no measured response ready when obliged to react to a wildfire, a flood, an order to evacuate....well, the inner voice will be the loudest voice you’ll hear. It is as unstoppable as water, as loud as a siren.
The inescapable thing the unconscious mind will do is influence your decisions and behaviour. It tells you what it knows to be true, and it is generally worth attending. It knows what you know, but it has thought about it in a different manner. It will speak in your inner voice, wordless but nudging toward this statement or that act. It is your gut talking. It can also carry the force of fear, if not panic, and this part must be thoughtfully balanced.
If you can do this, you’ll find you can take a stronger stance between fear and action. The climate emergency is upon us. If you remain in full denial mode, you may end up travelling to Death Valley to experience the heat, or to the interior of British Columbia to see what a really big wildfire looks like. You may freeze on the spot. It is quite possible to get overwhelmed by the dangers posed and do nothing. One way through is the middle ground between appreciating the urgency and responding thoughtfully.
First things first, know that such a balance can be struck. Panic and dread are clearly useless and drain energy. Do realistic preparatory things now in order to stay calm later. You will react less to social media and respond better to your own sense of direction and propriety. This means you can be more open to fact and less open to fear mongering. In that mental place, there is more clarity. You will see a way through confusing things a little better.
The principle of finding this balance is universal. Accept that something may become a threat, then do something about it. Train hard, fight easy. An ounce of prevention. Plan ahead. It boils down to not blindly reacting when the crisis comes to your door. Be ready in the background and calm in the foreground. This sort of activity frees up your conscious mind to stay focussed and remain clear when the need arrives. It is a question of taking smaller steps ahead of time in order to stay level headed when a fire or flood or tornado is bearing down. Because, you know, the odds are evidently increasing one of these things will happen to you.
Pick out a thing that truly, deeply scares you. Not the little stuff, I mean a big thing. This is where you will be most reactive and least able to cope if you do nothing at all. So start there. Let’s say the biggest threat is the loss of your home.
In Canada’s northern and western regions right now, the big threats are heat, drought, smoke and fire. In the east, it is more likely to be rain, flooding and high winds. How might this affect you? Decide what you can actually do about this. Identify the practical steps can you can take beforehand. You might have thought ahead and built in measures to protect the house, like managing excessive rain with sump pumps inside and rock beds outside to hold soil in place. Let the garden rewild a little; the vegetation soaks up rain water. If a tornado takes the roof, you may have to shelter in place. If that is a consideration, organize camping gear and foodstuffs, get them labelled and placed in waterproof containers.
Understand what you can and can not control. You may or may not have any control over how much fossil fuel you burn. You may have the option to use a bicycle. You will find that the build up of a series of smaller decisions, like buying a cargo bike, means gaining some control over other things. You might speak up at a city council meeting about bicycle lanes; you might base your city council vote on the types of plans the city has for future transportation. But in the end, accept that while you can act, you have limits.
Manage your expectations about what you want or feel you should have. This is like control; recognize that you can’t always get what you want. No one may stop you from having a bonfire at your cottage, but when trees are dying and winds are high, should you?
Consider whether you have, or can acquire, the ability to help out in a crisis. You do not live in isolation. You need other people for human society, for infrastructure and for survival. This is just not negotiable, so work out what you can do to contribute in turn. For example, high quality first aid training is available through Saint John Ambulance and the Red Cross in most cities in Canada.
Les Stroud, of Survivorman fame, made a video for his You Tube channel wherein he talks about emergency preparedness. There is a lot of useful information here.
He spoke of keeping a three months’ stock of necessities and foodstuffs on hand. No, he said, you don’t need three months all for yourself; you need the extra in case your neighbour is in trouble and needs something.
You need people for something far more important than infrastructure; you need human community. This is basic to your sense of preparedness. Include in your preparations the means to help others. The other side of that deal is the that if you can take care of yourself, you may be less of a drain on community resources in the future.
Develop your plans, then do as much as you can. The more you do up front, the calmer you will feel and the better you will handle whatever comes.
As Andrew Boryga wrote in Dwell, to shift from powerlessness to power takes some effort. The shift from believing what one has always believed to what is actually true is not easy, but it is necessary in order to grow into one’s full power.
The structures we have relied upon to live comfortably are not doing well. Too much loss can devastate the strongest people, so finding new ways to strength is important. It is a time to have your wits about you, all of them, working in unison to come to your best choices. The quiet inner mind is where your own personal reservoir of wisdom resides.
Tapping this reservoir is advisable for several reasons. There is much to be learned. Your inner voice can give very good advice when you are uncertain what to do. You might as well; the unconscious will communicate whether you like it or not. Whether you acknowledge it out loud or not, the unconscious mind is well aware of the wolf at the door. If you resolutely turn away and ignore it, you will end up with unbidden bits of truth emerging when you least expect it. The process was called Freudian slips for a long time. I have heard psychologists refer to it as emotional incontinence. Whatever you call it, the truth of what you feel and think about a matter will come out. Better to have developed a rapprochement with your inner mind ahead of time than experience a spontaneous and embarrassing puddle on the floor.
Fingers crossed. Hopefully, people will follow your advice.