Another explicit lesson I need to teach my kids, one I learned implicitly

Over the weekend Henri was making its way towards the Padawan household and honestly I was a bit meh about it. My biggest concern was keeping the little Padawans indoors without going nuts.

I will admit that I have come a long way since we had our whole house generator installed in terms of my worry and concern during extreme weather events.  And the impetuous for us installing the generator was repeated ice storms that left us without power for days, and not a tropical storm or hurricane.

My kids, however were pretty fearful, heck after all the COVID hysteria they are pretty fearful in general.  This is a very sad fact that I am sure many parents can relate to, and even adults are more fearful in general it is not limited to just kids.  That fear is running the lives of many and I would go as far as saying it is ruining their lives.

Let's face it we are safer now than we were as kids.  Also, we know a lot more about COVID now and how to treat it, therefore we are safer.   Many of us have gotten so complacent about how safe we that we demand absolute safety or at least the appearance of safety otherwise we cannot function.  I love this article about the Hypocrisy of Safetyism which was written in the spring of 2020 but still very relevant to us today.  Below is an excerpt, I added the emphasis.

Safetyism is a disposition that has been gaining strength for decades and is having a triumphal moment just now because of the virus. Public health, one of many institutions that speak on behalf of safety, has claimed authority to sweep aside whole domains of human activity as reckless, and therefore illegitimate.

 

I suspect the ease with which we have lately accepted the authority of health experts to reshape the contours of our common life is due to the fact that safetyism has largely displaced other moral sensibilities that might offer some resistance. At the level of sentiment, there appears to be a feedback loop wherein the safer we become, the more intolerable any remaining risk appears. At the level of bureaucratic grasping, we can note that emergency powers are seldom relinquished once the emergency has passed. Together, these dynamics make up a kind of ratchet mechanism that moves in only one direction, tightening against the human spirit.

 

 Let that sink in for a moment.

Today's Lesson

We live in Massachusetts, it is not state prone to tornadoes but they are a possibility.   We also do not live in one of the three counties that are most prone to tornadoes. Also we are at a higher elevation relative the the areas around us are in the solid orange, we have a few hills and such.  We are not flat like the mid west nor are we mountainous.

Source: https://en-us.topographic-map.com

Yesterday we were hit with a tornado warning, the warning came on my phone and it seemed spam-alious and I have to wonder how it was sent since I don't regularly keep my location on, so I am going to assume it was based on my area code.  But as you can see, the info is still kind of vague, and if you "check media" we were not even in the locations impacted section.  However, the little Padawans asked what that noise was when the text came in (BTW it kind of sounds like the sound from the Emergency Broadcast test alerts I remember from radio) so I told them.  They then freaked out about it.

The alerts are useful don't get me wrong, but the alert itself should not drive you to be fearful but to be alert.  Evaluate the alert and your location, and how likely the event is likely to happen.  For our location yes it is a possibility but unlikely, if I were in the mid west or the south I would not be so casual about it.  The point is, you need to evaluate not just the alert but how it relates to your specific circumstances, and then adjust accordingly.  Not all alerts are equal and not all alerts apply to you.  Think about what it says and adjust but most things should not induce all out panic and fear.