a good quote found…
“Great events make me quiet and calm; it is only trifles that irritate my nerves.” Queen Victoria
Are you good in a disaster? When the proverbial hits the fan? Or during a tragedy? I think I am.
At funerals I don’t fall to pieces. I’ve been in a few close-to-death experiences up glaciers and tumbling down mountains. During these times, my mind turns brutally focused and everything around me goes still and quiet and I get the job done.
I’m not a screamer. I attend to spiders and snakes in the house (you didn’t have them in yours growing up?).
And, actually, people like me like ourselves best in a crises. I think it’s the notion of rising to the occasion, having something to apply ourselves to. Being useful. It’s kind of primeval. How many occasions are there to truly be out on the edge, responding in undiluted, almost animalistic ways?
I even seek out drama to respond to. When my spirit feels stale, I’ll go for a mountain bike ride that scares me. Or a surf. It’s so I can cathartic-ise my bourgeois, suburban ennui.
In contrast, I find some day-to-day issues really hard to deal with. I always have. I can stand in the supermarket in front of toothpaste and honestly not be able to decide Aim or Colgate.
And it can make we want to cry.
Hey Sarah,
I find that I’m calm and stoic in other people’s crises but my own not so much … I’ve definitely learnt to manage that and am much better at keeping calm and focused on sorting it out. I now tend to not react immediately and let whatever it is just ’sit and be’ and then respond.
As for day-to-day issues, I don’t get that, I just have a favourite brand and stick to it, it’s one less decision to make in the day!
traditionally i panic. definitely a screamer & find it terrifying to dispose of a dead mouse or get live birds out of the chimney. when my dad died of a heart attack on my moving out of home day i immediately started screaming ‘i’ve killed my father, i’ve killed my father’ (before we knew he was dead, maybe if any of us had had the composure to try CPR . . .). The thought that flashed through my head was ’satan [& i was a committed athiest at the time] has done this to make me go insane’. Interesting as ten years later the thought flashed through my mind that his death was the greatest blessing of my life . . .yes i must have an enormous ego to think the universe is revolving around me!
But i digress.
i have got slightly better with each crisis. learning the hard way. when a friend of mine was diagnosed with late-stage terminal cancer at the age of 26 i didn’t go to see her. i felt awkward. but now i actually feel MORE comfortable with people who are in crisis than those who are not, i know that by being there for them i am making an important difference. that this is what makes life meaningful.
it is really hard not to get sucked into old habits & go into panic mode (when i can’t see one of my kids for more than a few minutes while out for example) but life has shown me time & time again how detrimental this is, so i really should know how to stay calm by now.
i reckon it just takes practice x
yay. good advice x
i also have trouble with the day to day issues lol, like the other morning my husband asked if i wanted my bread cut thick or thin & it was too much for me!!
Definitely better in a crisis than day to day stuff, such a great post Sarah, have often pondered this myself..spend soo much time sweatng the small EXTREMELY trivial stuff and yet when a bad thing happens (which so far have been few and far between touch wood) i am extremely stoic and soo calm..yah that you and Queen Vic are the same..don’t feel so unusual…:)
So cool and calm in a drama, I turn into the reluctant leader I was born to be. Just don’t ask me what I feel like for lunch cos I have no idea.