We humans got two basic approaches:
- Deal with it
- Avoid the hell out of it or, as Louis Carerras put it this morning, “If in doubt, chicken out.” (I loved this and just had to share!)
My method, which oddly enough I was thinking about this morning, is to study it and write about it (#2). I taught my students to go to the literature whenever they had a problem or a question that psychology could address. It was the first thing I did when my late husband got sick the first time: I bought this little red notebook (because red is the color of Mars, and Mars is the god of war, and we were going to war) and took off for Emory’s medical library. This was before internet.
I joke that my crie de guerre is still “To the literature!”
(I need a family crest with some sort of emblem– maybe something like the New York Library lions?–and that motto on it.)
I’m starting a Docsplainer today on dealing with the incredible, mind-boggling, planetary uncertainties brought on by climate change — as much to help me deal with the grief that I’m experiencing as to help readers. Some of my best lectures originated in uncertainty: I used to ask my classes at the beginning of the term what they wanted to learn (never mind the official learning objectives, because that is not in fact how we learn best). We had topical themes ranging from economic disparity to gun violence to race, and I always learned as much or more than they did from the exercise.
So that’s what I’m doing now: Taking the morning’s drear news feed and turning it into a foundation, a plan for survival in this brave new world. It starts in my journal entries, and ends here. I’ll admit, though, sometimes I have to avoid it for a minute, gird my loins, so to speak–and then maybe as soon as the next morning, I’m ready to tackle it. Like Scarlet O’Hara, there are days where even peeking at the news is like getting hit with a firehose of horrors, and I will throw up my hands and say, “I’ll think about it tomorrow!”
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