Be Your Own Disaster Relief Effort

I was at Outwrite yesterday reading the new Time Magazine.  It’s on “How To Survive A Disaster.”  This sounds pretty depressing – and I can assure you it was – but I guess I’ve always had a part of my personality that is intrigued with disaster.  Not so much the disaster itself, but the Psychological effects it has on humans.  How do people act in a disaster?  How would I act in a disaster?  I surely hope I don’t find this out, but I also realize that disasters are a part of the living experience.  

The article said that people usually really band together in times of disaster.  They create communities.  Leadership hierarchies.  A band of togetherness.  Whether it’s the tragic loss of 9/11, a sinking ship or a Cyclone, people generally show their best sides in a crisis.  

This leads to my weight loss for this reason:  When I went jet skiing 2 Christmases ago, I fell off the jet ski.  You can read my entire Blog account of it in one of my early Blog entries Just Call Me Your Bahama Papa.  Anyway, it was the first time I encountered the most horrific feeling;  my body not being able to do what my brain needed it to do.  I couldn’t get back up on the jet ski.  I was in the middle of the Ocean.  What if a shark came?   I started to panic.  My adrenaline started to pump and my brain knew I could get back on but my body gave me reason to doubt.  I just didn’t have enough upper body strength to pull myself up.  I was too heavy.  It was a marriage between humiliation and humility.  I needed to learn a lesson from this.

A few weeks before my surgery I watched a Discovery Health special where they took overweight people and smokers and timed them on how long it would take them to get out of a burning office building.  They had to go up a ton of flights of stairs and get to the roof where they’d be rescued.  Needless to say, none of the people faired well.  They probably would have passed out or even died.  The smokers and the obese people both struggled and struggled to save themselves.  

After a few weeks of getting the smokers off of the cigarettes and having everyone workout, they ran the same test.  Everyone made it out safely and in a much faster time.

So when I saw this Time Magazine article, I laughed to myself that I’d be so excited to read it.  I was the child who asked my parents where our escape ladder was in case of a fire.  I am not paranoid.  I have just always had a bit of a macabre curiosity.  This is probably why I love Tim Burton movies.

The article says that it’s healthy to be prepared.  Don’t obsess.  But be prepared.  Know where the fire exits are in your building so to speak.  But more importantly, one of the tips was to BE FIT!  They accounted that obese people had 3 times more of a chance of being killed in the World Trade Center.  This made me sad.  What if that had been me.  What if I had to climb down 100 flights of stairs or climb up 100.  Could I have made it?  Would I have been one of those people?  Adrenaline aside, which would most certainly push my ass, I never, ever want to be in that situation again like I was when I fell off that jet ski.  I don’t ever want to not be able to save myself.  Of course I eventually got back on, I’m not still swimming in the Atlantic, but it took too long and I needed help from other *people.  

*Disclaimer – getting help from others is a great thing!  But in this case, I should have been able to get myself back on the jet ski.  The next time I need help from others, I don’t want it to be because of my weight.  

Even if it’s not about disasters but if you have an adventurous spirit like I have, you want to be fit and in shape.  I fell off my raft while Whitewater rafting and luckily I was able to get back on the raft.  But what if I couldn’t? Or this year when I went rock climbing and that hike straight up a 500 ft. elevation?  That’s another story for another day!  But it was so much fun and a great physical challenge and I was able to accomplish my goal.  Nature will not slow down or be kind to you just because you aren’t in shape.  It’ll break down your Ego in a split second. 

 
(That’s me on the far right going “OMG!!!”)

I share all of this not to be Debby Downer, but just to bring attention to this aspect of our accountability and responsibility to ourselves.  For some reason, there have been a lot of weird disasters it seems lately. Hurricanes.  Tornadoes.  Earthquakes.  Terrorism.  Cyclones.  Wildfires.  I did get a taste of what I would be like when scared, and it was this year when the Tornado sirens went off and my windows were shaking in a threatening way.  I had just gotten out of the shower.  I thought, “Okay.  I need to put on some pants!  I’d hate to be swept up in tornado with no pants on!”  Hey, at least I still have a sense of humor in these moments.  Then I thought,  ”Okay, I need to get Rowan (my cat) and we need to go in my closet till it passes…”  At first my anxiety shot up but then I thought calmly about just what needed to be done.  The article says this reaction is better than those who completely freeze.  

On a positive note, I am feeling more and more reliable toward myself in the case that something *may happen.  I’m not planning on it or being anxious/worrying about it, I just have an awareness of it like we all do.   Kind of like just knowing it might rain tomorrow and I have a pool date.  I hope it won’t rain but it’s sure as hell not going to stop me from swimming!  I attribute so much of this to how amazingly fast we can retrieve NEWS now-a-days.  Not that long ago, we had no freaking idea what was really going on in other places or by the time we found out (damn Nazis) it was too late.

It’s not really the fear of what could happen that I think of.  It’s making sure that I am healthy, in shape and strong enough to fend for myself.  The Time article says people just think it’ll be luck and a prayer, and this is part of it (it doesn’t hurt!) but it’s also about being prepared, not panicking and being in shape!  The benefits outweigh (no pun intended) the costs.  Not only is weight loss an aesthetic bonus, but it’s also a life bonus.

And lastly, it’s kind of crazy that we fear things like tornadoes and terrorism, but in all honesty, we are our biggest disaster to ourselves.  Chances are, our weight, stress levels, being a heavy drinker or a smoker are really the things that will kill us.  And we are doing it to ourselves.  

Be your own disaster relief effort.

—
Now listening to the album Narrow Stairs by Death Cab For Cutie