Close Enough

Tomorrow marks one month of organizing and donating to help the refugees from the north and living under the dark cloud of the Fukushima nuclear power plant along with daily aftershocks that ask us if we’re next (click). It’s not surprising that when school finally resumed on Monday, there was some anxiety when all 90+ faculty came together for the first time since March 11th. Worry appeared evenly split between concern for our own level of danger and the emotional well-being of the students returning the following day.

We took a number of key steps to help us move forward but one of the most significant was to just give people a chance to talk. We discussed how we’d been managing, how to best support each other, how to best support the students, and how to respond and recognize any member of the community who might be having particular difficulty. All of this seemed to contribute to our ability to re-start but nothing more so than the energy, resilience, and enthusiasm the students brought in with them when doors opened on Tuesday.

That was almost a week ago but I would be surprised if there are many who aren’t still experiencing some level of post traumatic stress. Even after 10 years living with Japan’s regular small earthquakes, recent volatile reminders interrupt me as I’m falling asleep and cause me to think twice before leaving my family to go off for any extended time. As vulnerable a state as this is, I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t paradoxical growth embedded in it, too.

One of the things we may have gained from this, albeit still largely undefined, is greater perspective. I can see that my relationships with people at school and my family are closer. We have all been pitted against a common adversary and while we haven’t won, we have survived and done so with respect for each other and decency. I’m sure it sounds cliche, but I also have a greater appreciation for being alive. Today the cherry blossoms were in all their glory and soon they will be in Tohoku, too, only more than 20,000 people won’t be there to see them. I am thankful to be able to see the trees.

This isn’t just about spiritual harmony because I have also discovered intolerance, as well. I am more aware now of just how much of modern life is contrived. Deadlines and policies, protocol and procedures, seemed so real before and now I can’t even recognize what I used to find so stressful. I’ll still play the game but I won’t take it seriously again because I’ve seen the big picture and those things aren’t in it.

Comedian Louis C.K. summed it up perfectly when he said famously, “everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy.” I anticipate, following this experience, I’ll have even less time for unhappiness in my personal life. Really, what is there to complain about when the alternatives include everything you own flying around the room trying to kill you and a 30m wave crushing your home and community? Those possibilities put a long line at the bank in perspective pretty quickly.

Really, what is there to complain about when the alternatives include everything you own flying around the room trying to kill you and a 30m wave crushing your home and community?

It’s hard to make too much of our experience given the incredible hardships that still face those who survived in the north. While our level of suffering can’t compare to people who were in the tsunami or live closer to the power plant, we are close enough to feel the aftershocks and seriously worry about radiation. We are also, thankfully, far enough away to appreciate the cherry blossoms and live in a way that acknowledges that everything really is amazing. – AC

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