The Opposite of Calm
On the weather, and the world
There has been one tornado and 4 tornado warnings in Ottawa this summer, by my count. As I write this, I am sitting in the living room listening to the rain pelt the windows behind me, punctuated now and again with rolls of thunder. I fell asleep on my son’s bed after work while he sat next to me, watching Duck Tales on his laptop, and woke up to my phone’s emergency alert for another tornado warning.
In my childhood, the natural phenomena I feared most were quicksand and the Bermuda Triangle. Neither has played a prominent role in my adult life. But floods and tornadoes? They’re a thing now. We had a flood in Ottawa six years ago that damaged tons of properties. They called a once in a century thing. Two years later, it happened again.
Was it always like this and I just didn’t know? Or are things worse now?
All of this extreme weather is of course driven by climate change. But it isn’t only weather that’s become more extreme. The news seems worse, I think, in my adulthood, or else there’s just more of it. We’re all so close together, and it’s getting crowded, as Lauren Hough wrote so brilliantly this week. Whenever anything awful happens, we find out instantly, unlike during our childhoods, where it would take days for crises in other parts of the world to become real to us.
During Covid, while we were living in Chelsea, Quebec, grocery shopping and hiking were my go-to outings. My friend Emily and I, who’d met months before taking the same commuter bus into the city, became each other’s sanity keepers, taking long walks in the forest. Love your family but need to see someone other than these same three people so you don’t lose it? Walk with Emily! Horrible day at work and the office is also your basement so you can’t get away? Walk with Emily! When we had the time, we’d wander the longer trails and duck into the different sections of the forest. When we didn’t, we’d pace the same 2000 step loop, timing our conversations to fit the length of our borrowed freedom. Inevitably, we’d linger by my front door or hers another 10 minutes, wishing curfew was further away, unable to face another night inside.
On one of these walks, I shared my theory about our particular brand of Millennials, those of us who’d grown up in North America, and maybe Europe, during the 90s, in a period of seeming calm and prosperity. All we’d known was peace and plenty. We had no previous exposure to strife, and so we had no coping mechanisms. Our kids, I posited, might be miserable and suffering through the pandemic, but they would build resilience in a way we never had. And they’d build it during their formative years. I was probably just allaying my mom guilt, reformulating a Covid-specific version of what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Years earlier, as I was coming into adulthood and noticing how problem-filled and complicated the world was, I remember asking my dad, was it always like this and I just didn’t know? Or are things worse now? He shrugged, probably the same answer I would give my kid. The world is tumultuous, and there are places and times filled with more or less strife than others, and if you have the luxury of noticing one way or the other, you’re very very blessed.
And that’s what I’m thinking about as my son emerges from the basement (again) to ask if I’m done writing (again). That and climate change and late-stage capitalism and recessions and Donald Trump’s indictments, and the fact that a lot of these things are very much only concepts in my life; they may pinch a little here and hurt a little there, but I am incredibly fortunate not to be standing directly in the eye of the storm. One day, my son may ask me the same question as I asked my dad, and I pray that he has the same luxury of considering the answer from a theoretical standpoint.