A Moment Of Grace: Part 1

[I’m not a religious man, but like all wise people I have a spiritual component. This is my story and only mine. If it doesn’t fit with your philosophy that’s none of my business. Skip it if you wish.]

“It is said that God will never give you more than you can handle. This is bullshit. Life may hit you hard enough to bury you, break you, or (one hopes) just bruise you. Or trouble may peaceably pass by like a dark cloud on the horizon. One can never tell. What matters is how you negotiate the details with God. Ideally you’ll bear what you can and hand to God that which you cannot.”

I’m gonna’ start this series with a true story I first heard over wine in a Portuguese tavern:

On the morning of November 1^st, 1755, the people of Lisbon were celebrating All Saints Day. At about a quarter to ten, a powerful earthquake rocked the city. Buildings fell and the city was devastated. Survivors fled collapsing structures, seeking the safety of open space; which they found at the docks. The subsequent tsunami arrived with almost malignant timing. Forty minutes is just long enough to flee collapsing city structures and assemble like bowling pins near the shoreline. Two more waves were Poseidon’s version of a “double tap”. Then, as if they hadn’t experienced enough tragedy, large parts of the city burned to the ground. Candles, lit in celebration of All Saints Day and felled in the earthquake, started multiple fires. They combined and became a firestorm. The firestorm generated its own weather, pulled oxygen from the environs, and incinerated everything in its path. It killed another portion of the people who had already endured more than anyone could reasonably expect.

Imagine the horror of it all. Sequential mortal peril. One after the other. Nowhere safe. No chance to rest. Not a moment to grieve. Just one terror after the next. Folks who survived collapsing church roofs and evaded a tsunami wound up asphyxiated a hundred feet from the flames.

This is ridiculous. It’s too much. If it was in a book, I’d say the plot was unbelievable. If it was in a movie, I’d say they spent too much on CGI. But it really happened. So much shit in such ridiculous succession that it’s almost comically unreasonable is a real thing. Nobody on earth is prepared for an earthquake/tsunami/firestorm on the same day. One disaster is enough.

But, of course, there is no “enough”. It is true because it happened.

The good news is the story didn’t end with the disaster. The Portuguese rebuilt. They did so admirably. If you visit Baixa Pombalina in Lisbon (which you should) you can experience the rebuilt quarter yourself. It is gorgeous.

At a smaller scale it happens to us all.

I’m telling you the story of the Lisbon… uh… what do you call it? “Earthquake” isn’t enough. Let’s call it the “Lisbon Triple Threat Overtime, Turn the Dial to Eleven, Unwarranted Clusterfuck of Doom”.

I’m telling you the story of the Lisbon Triple Threat Overtime, Turn the Dial to Eleven, Unwarranted Clusterfuck of Doom because I want to remind myself that unreasonable things happen and that they can cascade. Also, that my concerns, as bad as they feel when I’m in them, are still soundly on a little scale of “first world problems”. Finally, that regression to the mean doesn’t eliminate the possibility of comically unlikely levels of interlocking successive misfortune. This is important. I felt the need to reflect on the long view to help muddle through and come out on the other end of what, for me, was a minor but frustrating shitstorm. Lastly, I’m writing because somewhere there’s a person or persons who are right now wading through eleven levels of simultaneous bullshit. For them, it’s too much bullshit. They might take solace in the fact that it happens to us all. Nobody’s life is as stress free as their Facebook feed implies.