Do you keep calm in a crisis?
I think that’s dependent on the actual crisis itself. The other factor here is that everybody has their own definition of the term ‘crisis’. Generally speaking, it would need to be quite extreme for me to consider something a crisis and I think that I’d be okay.
I’ve been through more than more my fair share of bullshit over the years, found myself in some less-than-ideal situations unfortunately caused by other people, and although at the time it feels like the entire world is crashing down around me in an extreme path of pure destruction, I feel like I’m going to have a complete breakdown and yet somehow, I come out on the other side. Not necessarily without taking a few knocks along the way, but I manage to end up okay.
I think there are generally two ways to handle a crisis, either let it completely consume you so you find yourself just running around like a headless chook without actually achieving anything in terms of a solution; OR there are the people who recognise a crisis, grit their teeth and think ‘right, how the fuck am I going to get through this? What can I do to fix this? Who can I call? Who can help me?’. The problem with the latter is that sometimes you can try everything you can think of, and you can find yourself being quite narrow-sighted about what your options are – probably because you’re too busy freaking out about whatever your crisis is… this is where friends / family come into play, because they may be able to give you a suggestion for a different path you might want to look into that you hadn’t already thought of. It’s about perception, and knowing how to look at the situation from every conceivable angle.
Certainly when I was younger, I was the one who made every problem a crisis, but that was just because I was being an idiot and just being melodramatic. Forgetting my assignment for school – CRISIS! Finding out that mum bought the wrong type of chocolate – CRISIS! Going to McDonalds and discovering their frozen coke machine wasn’t working in the middle of summer – CRISIS. …see where I’m going with this. Back then, that’s the kind of drama that I was dealing with. Most certainly not a crisis by any standards… although, do you know how frustrating it is to go to 3 separate McDonalds’ and find that all their frozen coke machines aren’t working. That’s a mini-crisis for me, and also something that sends me into a table-flipping rage. lol.
Growing older, and moving out home, let alone moving interstate was something that forced me to become an adult, regardless of whether I really wanted to or not. I remember my first share house – having our power cut, or our water cut because one of the housemates didn’t pay their bill – THAT is a crisis. Having housemates move out in the middle of the night and not telling anybody – THAT is also a crisis. But even then, there are others that have experienced far more severe situations than I have – people who have been bashed to within an inch of their lives; those who have had a loved one murdered; people finding themselves out on the streets with nowhere to go – there’s so much worse that happens out in the world, what I would consider a crisis, merely pales in comparison to what others have to go through.
That alone is quite a wake up call. It makes me realise that there truly will always be somebody out there who is worse off than I am – no matter how bad I think I might have it.
I can’t even begin to imagine how I would cope if (god forbid) anything that extreme were to happen to me. I think it would just destroy me. There are some things that happen to people that they never recover from. I would hate to ever become one of those people.
…maybe that’s why some people are so determined to always see the positives in life and in people… almost like a mask, or a crutch for them to lean on. Maybe they behave like that because they’ve experienced something so incredibly traumatic, they need as much positivity and happiness in their life just to get them from day to day. I’ve never really given it much thought until this very moment.
Hmmm… maybe I really should put in more of an effort to be more accepting?
adorablyobnoxious 