Katrina whispered something: Can you hear it?

Hurricane Katrina has hit all of us in America, both literally and figuratively, close to home. Initially, the most surprising thing to me was seeing, in report after report, media personnel covering the scene and breaking down emotionally. This experience was personal to them, so it became personal to me.

Seasoned reporters actually cried or raged for all to see in wonderfully honest displays of their humanity in proportion to the experience they faced. I must confess that apart from being excited because here they were, connected with the moment that lived inside them for all to see.

This was not really professional behavior on their part because we expect our professional reporters to be more than human by NOT being affected by the things they report to us that are designed to affect us.

That’s how things go. We specify groups of individuals in our society to deal with things that the rest of us don’t want to deal with. We ask you to do it in a limited amount of time, most of the time driving tremendously high volume. We ask them to do it, and then we leave the experience behind, as if it hadn’t really become a part of them. In that process, we almost demand that they be of a different composition than our own; as if it takes more than a human being to do that kind of work, provide that kind of service, handle that kind of pressure, or act in that particular way.

It does, especially in view of our expectations. The problem is that most who want to isolate themselves from the pain of being human expect those who handle them to act as if that pain doesn’t exist. To make matters worse, those in services who act as if such things exist are often removed from providing the service because being affected as a human means not being able to be the machine that can perform the service. And we think we need those machines.

Something very vital is missing here.

Where it all falls apart is that most of us assume that just because one individual can handle a specific load for the rest of us means that they can handle all aspects of that load. The one aspect that is consistently neglected is coming to terms with one’s humanity, vulnerability, and emotions in the midst of service delivery. That can’t happen in a vacuum. We need each other.

In our current culture, we don’t allow our heroes to complete their experience of being human. We send human beings into the fray (whatever name you give it), we require them to act like machines, and then when they break, we don’t provide a path back to their humanity.

The reporters in Louisiana, because their job was to testify for us, were the most obvious example of what happens when humans reach the limits of their humanity. They were just the tip of the iceberg of people being called upon to be machines to deal with this disaster.

They were so unusually “visible” as human beings, it was shocking. And how did that register with most people? That made the experience of watching coverage of Katrina’s aftermath so real, so unsettling, that many begin to question themselves and others. The questions that arise are about poverty, race and war.

And that is happening, but we are facing some very important choices. Do we point fingers and assign blame or examine what it means to be a human being, at any level of service, from citizen to first responder to president, called to meet a disaster?

Unless we learn to start moving in a different direction, as soon as the shock of Katrina wears off (or Tsunami, or suicide bombings, or, or…), we’ll be back to the same old soul. – exhaustive approach that, in its essence, promotes the continuation of our creation of disasters such as war and poverty for ourselves and the world. We tend to go to great lengths to avoid the impact our choices have on other people.

Yes, I was glad to see some very visible personalities displaying their humanity. But how did their personal stories unfold? The cameras delayed (uncomfortably) and then faded or zoomed out, leaving us with the image of a professional on his personal edge in some form of pain. We thought, “Oh, how terrible for him, I hope he can recover, he was a good reporter.” And then we change the channel.

What a great opportunity we are missing!

What if, instead of fading away and moving on to another reporter with their shit in order who is covering the mayor hinting at the governor’s negligence who then blames FEMA, we keep those cameras focused on the affected reporter for as long as it takes? work through that immediate experience?

Having been a paramedic for twelve years, I can attest to the fact that most of us would be surprised at how easy the process can be when people learn to support other people who have emotions.

The reporter did his job. The news came out at the right time. The coverage was good and perhaps, above all, real. And now, we are asked to continue to watch as the reporter goes to someone he trusts and asks him to witness him, hold him, or give him space to cry: some evidence of a human being facing the dilemmas of being a human being. human with the help of other human beings.

And do you know what we would find? We watched how the reporter, after taking a bit of a lead, could move on to the next story and do what he was supposed to do. In the newsroom he would design, we would check in with that reporter periodically to witness the longer process of recovery from trauma. In the meantime, he or she would continue to do the work.

Most likely though, in the current paradigm, I bet most of the crews supporting their anchors had no idea what to do, but, touched like human beings, they found some way to be there. But it’s also likely that support was geared toward getting the reporter back into his protective shell so the next job could get done.

My point is that if this kind of exposure were given to the process, at least acknowledging that there IS a process, many more of us would gain the skills to more equally share the burden of being human rather than shift the weight of disaster that falls on us. the people we ask to be machines.

Most of the people involved in vital protective agencies like the police, fire and medical services, the armed forces and their adjuncts are the professionals we depend on to “carry” the weight of crime, violence, weakness, death and tragedy. If I had to find a universal phrase to describe the central dilemma everyone faces, even under normal circumstances, it would be this: “There, but luckily.”

We, especially in the United States, live under the illusion that life is forever, that suffering is abhorrent and that everything will work out in the end, not to mention that we are the heroes of the world. This is not the reality and the members of the central agencies that I mentioned know this better than most. Our culture demands that they suffer with just this knowledge.

If that suffering were more apparent, more open, more evenly recognized and shared, it would put into better perspective how much suffering we actually create for ourselves and others.

If we could start to see that, then we could start doing things differently for the good of all.