Just because you’re eating ice
cream in the sunshine doesn’t mean the hurricane didn’t wreak its wrath. And
just because a person sits outside and looks homeless yet holding a cell phone
should not be judged negatively (think of it, if he’s lucky, perhaps he keeps
it charged in the car, that has become his sole possession and abode).

It is easy to judge others
quickly from a self-centered solipsism. Solipsism, say the philosophers, is the
belief that “I am the center of my personal universe.”

Driving home from a Red Cross
shelter where I volunteered in response to Hurricane Irene’s flooding, I
pondered these things. Here, I leave a shelter where people have been displaced
due to flooding to find, in the Sunday twilight, people strolling the sidewalks
of West Chester.

Goodnight, Irene! Perhaps some
were out to enjoy the clean feel of the air after all the wind and rain;
perhaps some were glad to leave houses that had lost power to seek a restaurant
or a movie to bide their time.

There is a painting by Pieter
Bruegel the Elder, a Flemish artist of the 1500s, called The Fall of Icarus.
Here it is that Icarus is a wee figure in the corner, falling from the sky into
the sea. Meanwhile, what is most notable is the large figure of a farmer
plowing his field. Life goes on, despite the dramas and the traumas occurring.
My drive home was sort of like the painting. On one road, I see the everyday
activity of people shopping, dining out, walking, jogging. On the next road,
all is dark, no power, then take a turn—ah, this road is closed, and no wonder:
the blackness shines as though it were a placid lake, the water high enough to
hide road to meadow to meet the Brandywine.

So many different worlds all at
once and if I am solipsistically in one world, I may forget the reality of the
other. There are many realities hidden to us.

Working at the shelter, I
discovered several people who had been living out of their cars. The flooding
and the wind drove them inward. Telling this to another, I discover more: that
this person found that a full time employee of her institution had been living
out of her car with her children. The employee disclosed her secret when she
decided to move from the area.

These stories make the woman I
witnessed in China, in 2007, standing in front of her “house” (basically a tiny
storage unit with a rollup corrugated door) look positively wealthy.

We quickly judge others for why
they are where they are. We project that the other is less than we are simply
because they have less. This is false. The converse is also untrue: those who
have more are not better than we are either.

I don’t think it is off-point
to mention that while some of us have weathered the storm better than others in
our own locality, we also need not minimize the power of this storm in general.
Even though it took an unusual path, sparing coastlines, Irene walloped
Vermont. Surely the people of Vermont are not saying that this hurricane’s
impact was hyped. Again, the solipsism—“I’m okay so therefore it can’t be that
bad.” Another word for solipsism may be denial of a reality larger than
oneself.

Reading about the horrendous
devastation in Vermont, I came across a quote from George Schenk, the owner of
the American Flatbread Company whose famous pizzeria and farm inn were
destroyed. After seven feet of water swept through his buildings, he noted the
volunteers that came to help. Schenk said, “It’s really been an exceptional
outpouring of support and it kind of humbles you. … It reminds us all, we don’t
live alone, as much as we might think about living in isolation.”

No solipsism there—and that is
our hope!

The story associated with
Schenk’s quote can be found at VTDigger.org,
“Mad River Valley Bears Brunt of Irene Damage in Central Vermont,” by Sylvia
Fagan, 8/30/2011.

* Kayta Curzie Gajdos holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and
is in private practice in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. She welcomes comments atMindMatters@DrGajdos.com or 610-388-2888. Past columns are posted towww.drgajdos.com.