Who’s in charge here
Humans plan, Mother Nature laughs
Last Sunday afternoon, millions of Americans moved through their daily routines, secure in the belief that they were in command of their lives. They flipped a switch and a light flickered on. They turned a key and a car rumbled. They pushed a button and the television squawked to life.
Hours later, superstorm Sandy barreled ashore and reminded us all of an immutable truth: There are greater powers on Earth than humans. We are not in control.
The storm generated a torrent of apocalyptic images—a crane dangling from a midtown Manhattan skyscraper, planks of the famed Atlantic City boardwalk torn and tossed by the force of the sea. The death toll rising by the hour. Seven, eight million people without power. Calls pouring into New York City’s 911 center at a rate of 300 a minute. Billions in damages yet untallied.
This storm, like the great Chicago blizzard of February 2011, is another warning to all who wander through life under the delusion that nature can be tamed and contained.
When that mammoth blizzard paralyzed Chicago—burying a conga line of cars and buses on Lake Shore Drive—many people were shocked that such a thing could still happen. After all the city’s extensive emergency preparations. After a fleet of snowplows and a mountain of salt poised to move 24/7. With advanced communications, GPS, social media, smartphones and smart people at the helm
of the city’s snow command. The blizzard flicked all that aside.
So did Sandy. We make plans. We maneuver through the days and weeks. We delude ourselves into thinking that all the hazards ahead can be avoided with foresight and preparation.
But the hazards ahead, even if foreseen, are implacable. No amount of emergency planning or official warnings turned Sandy one iota from its path or diminished its power by a single degree. The storm marched ashore on the New Jersey coast, exactly where and when it wanted.
At some point, nature overcomes the human ability to foresee and to fortify. Whether it is a storm that everyone can see coming for days, or an invisible-to-the-naked-eye virus, nature makes the rules and humans have to play by them.
This is not entirely bad. For all the misery that storms like Sandy generate, they also may bring an epiphany about the relentlessness of daily life, the chirping phone, the barrage of choices on television or at the mall, the gaudy lure of the Internet.
In the nighttime quiet of a home without power, flashlights rule. Distractions disappear. The pace slows. Different sounds float in: the cough of an electric generator, the whine of a chain saw. You view your neighborhood, your neighbors, your home, your life . . . in a different light.
And then the power suddenly surges on. Life snaps back to normal. You get busy. You forget. You make plans. And so does nature.