Statistically Safe

On war, guilt and the surreal arithmetic of staying human

This war with Iran is really messing with the whole premise of Confessions of an Expat, which is to talk about the ordinary and, well, sure, less ordinary aspects of living in Israel when American. But then, “confessions” is right in the name, so maybe not.

Confession: I’m scared.

Confession: I’m depressed.

Confession: I feel guilty all the time.

I guess that last one is the only one you’ll be surprised at – unless you are a psychologist, in which case you are nodding sagely right now.

Remember old-fashioned pinball machines? When you’d flick the whappers on the bottom left and right, and the ball just raced up, down, right, left, and all around chaotically, pinging and lighting up stuff? Yeah. That’s how it feels to live in a country being attacked by ballistic missiles.

You know the chances that a ballistic missile (Circumference: 5 FEET. Weight: 79,433 POUNDS. Speed on impact: 1,500 MILES PER HOUR.) actually hitting YOU are statistically slim. Not zero if, say, you lived in Omaha, but it’s unlikely. Once you clear that up and feel 1% better, you consider that you know and care about a lot of people in this tiny country who are in harm’s way. So the worry begins to ripple outward from yourself to people you know – friends, family, colleagues – even the nice guy at the vegetable store who always slices up the watermelon for you, or oh, the religious butcher at the kosher shop with pictures of rabbis on his wall who always is so kind and patient with you – oh, that street, that building, you know that building – it’s gone now?!

The pinball machine is lighting up, bouncing off MY danger and hitting THEIR danger, and pinging off of every possible permutation of fear/despair – what about the Iranians? Do they get warnings? No. Is this their fault? No. And then the machine really gets revved up – what does this mean for Israel? For the Middle East? For the world? What will Trump do or not do?

And this all is like an incoming hurricane leading to One Big Overthought: what about my future? What about OUR future? Will the collective “we” live in constant war in the next several decades? What about power supplies and fuel? What will that do to jobs?

When I was younger, of course, global events also impacted the future of jobs, health, and well-being. But I was young, and I didn’t care. When you get older and are banking on being able to retire – or maybe not even that – but earn a living and live a life – these global impacts take on fresh new meaning. They cast a shadow. Another ripple: Is this what my old age will be like? Hardship?

That’s a great segue to the GUILT. I am worried about hardship? Friends, at the current moment, I have electricity, internet, food in the fridge, and clean water to drink. My country is being attacked by ballistic missiles, yes, but we are (so far) winning this war. My country invested in shelters for its citizens. And sirens and warnings, too. I am not now, nor have I ever suffered the way Gazans are suffering. Or the Sudanese. I do not have a huge, jagged scar across my face the way one of the survivors of the Darfur genocide with whom I volunteered through Amnesty International had. I am free; I have a car, skills, resources, and friends. I am not actually suffering. So how dare I complain about fear, anxiety, despair, and worry?

A siren blares, and in my case, I have to walk five feet to a safe room within my apartment. So I’m not suffering as much as Tel Avivis who have to run down several flights of stairs. And so far, Iran is not targeting Haifa as much as they are targeting Tel Aviv, so I cannot have the same level of anxiety that Tel Avivis have. How selfish to worry about my old age, my future. What about the 90 million people in Iran? What will become of them? How’d you like to live in Gaza right now or Yemen? People in Taiwan are living with a huge looming threat. I have no right to feel anything I am feeling – yet these feelings are natural and cannot be quashed under the mighty heel of guilt.

Every single one of us, wherever we live, has a thousand reasons to feel scared right now. (Except Elon Musk. He’s fine.) It’s all relative, and we are all entitled to our feelings and reactions to the threats in this world, from a coming storm in the Pacific to the destruction of a wildfire to incoming ballistic missiles to ICE raids and losing access to healthcare or food stamps.

Should the collective “we” feel guilty if we find ways – even if they are temporary – to feel better? If we do some yoga to relieve the stress, should we feel terrible that we have a yoga mat? If we go to the grocery to buy food to make a good dinner tonight as a way of doing something that might distract from the worry, should we feel terrible that there IS a grocery and there IS food? 

The answer is a word that has come to seem mealy-mouthed and clichéd in the past few years. That word, which I will pull from behind the curtain triumphantly, is GRATITUDE.

I’m grateful for what I have and what I can do to try to manage my distress and worry. I can’t jump on a plane and go to Yemen and help the kids there. But I can call my neighbors and see if they are okay. I can do some stretching to lower the level of cortisol in my body and keep breathing normally so that I can make a nutritious, tasty dinner for Gidon and me that might give us a few minutes of relief from the worry. I can use the tools I have learned over a lifetime to slow the runaway train imaginings of my mind, of a dystopian future for myself and everybody I know, and gather myself up with a very old-fashioned word that seems perfect in this moment – COURAGE.

My survival instinct demands that I cope as well as I can right now; I can’t curl up into a ball and sleep all day, as tempting as that sounds.  Courage and gratitude build up strength. Guilt and anger saps it. I’m going to go with building up my strength. I don’t have any other viable choice.

I perused my bookshelves this morning, about an hour after a direct hit on a hospital in southern Israel, looking for distraction, relief – something – anything. And I came upon this:

“…it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period that some of the noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”