Twenty eight years ago, I was awakened by our house shaking. I felt like the house was going to fall down. Fear and protecting my children were my immediate motivation. Fear is a powerful motivator. I jumped out of bed, and was quickly thrown against the wall of our bedroom by a powerful shake. That didn't deter me as I ran across our upstairs hallway, as another shake threw me against the wrought iron railing that looked over our stairwell. It was only later that I would see the 1/2 inch indentation in the wrought iron that my knee had slammed into. Continuing on, I saw my oldest daughter, six years old, standing in the hallway looking dazed. My first instinct and primary emotional reaction was to get my youngest daughter, who was almost three years old. I ran into her room, grabbed her out of bed, and was soon thrown against the wall by another shake, while holding her in my arms. Fear is a powerful motivator.
While all earthquake guidance says to get under a doorway, I literally wasn't thinking. I bounded down the spiral staircase, two steps at a time, while carrying my daughter. Our front door, double dead bolted, was wide open, as I briefly heard our home alarm go off. I ran out the front door and onto our front lawn, where I put my daughter on the ground, turned around, and was about to run back into the house to get my older daughter. Fear is a powerful motivator. But, my daughter immediately started crying, and I knew that I couldn't leave her. So, we waited. It seemingly took forever, but the quaking subsided and I called to my wife and daughter, still upstairs in the house. They made their way downstairs and joined us on the lawn. And then I passed out.
My wife thought that I had passed out from the fear and excitement of all that was happening. The reality was probably more simple. I finally felt the pain in my knee from slamming against the wrought iron railing. I was fortunate that I hit my knee squarely on my patella, or I might have managed to injure the joint itself. Instead, the bruise would hurt for the better part of six months.
Fear is a powerful motivator. In that moment of fear, I'd forgotten the mantra that I'd learned twenty years earlier while taking a lifesaving course: "Suck, tuck, sink and think." Or, as a physician encountering a code blue situation, as describe in "The House of God": "first, take your own pulse." On the day of the earthquake, I'd forgotten both and reacted solely to the fear.
Nearly two years into a pandemic that has elicited similar feelings and engendered a near daily (if not hourly) motivation to protect the vulnerable, I am reminded by the power of fear. There are many who criticize that fear and debate whether and how it should guide our actions. I will readily acknowledge that reacting in fear does not generally result in the wisest or pragmatic response. It is, after all, an emotional response. It's time to take a breath, sit back, and take my own pulse. It's time to let go of the fear,
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