درسنامه تفسیری

Catastrophe – Commentary

Hello and welcome to the commentary for this month’s lesson. Catastrophe, disaster— what are we talking about?

What are— catastrophes, disasters, kind of the same meaning. These are sudden big events and typically they are negative, potentially dangerous.

For example, natural disasters— earthquakes, floods; more personal disasters like a fire or accidents, things like that. Or, of course, we’ve also discussed financial disasters like stock market crash, currency crash, that kind of thing.

The biggest danger to you, to your family, to anyone during a disaster, during a catastrophe is paralysis. Paralysis means you can’t move, right? That’s what the literal, direct meaning of paralysis is. You can’t physically move your body.

But, it also has the idea of indecisiveness, of being unable to make a decision, of just doing nothing. And that is the biggest danger in any kind of catastrophe is being overwhelmed and shocked and surprised and therefore, doing nothing.

If you look at different events, different catastrophes that have happened and you see a lot of the people who suffered or who died. Of course, sometimes there’s nothing you can do. That’s just the truth of life.

But often many people die or suffer, simply because they do nothing. They freeze. They can’t make decisions; they just do nothing. For example, when we look at crimes, a lot of times, violent crimes, mass shootings, for example, where one or more people come into a building and they just start shooting people.

Some of these incidents, these situations have video. We can watch videos to see what happened. And what’s amazing when you see videos about these kind of mass shootings, for example, is how many people do nothing; how many people just freeze.

They don’t move, they don’t run, they don’t do anything. They just stay stuck in one place. They just wait to die, basically. They wait to die, instead of running as fast as they can to get out and escape, which seems like the smart thing to do and it is a smart thing to do. Yet most people just freeze. They just stop and don’t do anything.

We’ve seen in natural disasters too where even though people are told to leave, to evacuate, to get out of the area, they’ll just stay stuck. It’s like they can’t adjust their thinking to the sudden surprise and shock of what’s happening. So they just stay in one place. And they wait and wait, hoping someone will come and help and no one comes.

So this overwhelm, this feeling overwhelmed, the shock, the indecisiveness, not knowing what to do and therefore doing nothing, the paralysis; that is the big danger.

In any kind of sudden catastrophe, it doesn’t matter if it’s a crime or a natural disaster or a financial disaster. It doesn’t matter if it’s kind of a smaller one or a bigger one.

Even if it’s not deadly, you might not die, but you could still suffer, you could still lose a lot by doing nothing. So doing nothing is usually the very worst thing in these situations.

So, you’ve got to prepare mentally. The first thing you gotta do— Let’s talk about specific things you do now. How do you prepare for different catastrophes?

The first thing is mental preparation. That means that you actually think about the possibility of various kinds of catastrophes. You actually think that it could happen. It’s possible.

So you think about these worst case scenarios, these terrible happenings, these terrible events and then you think about, what would I do? What would be the smart thing to do?

So you want to think about these things before they happen. When they happen it’s so shocking and happens so fast, it’s hard to make decisions, unless you’ve already thought about it a little bit.

Again, like with crimes, too many people will never have to deal with some kind of crime, some kind of violent crime. So they just don’t think about it, “Oh I’m not gonna think about it.”

And then when it happens they’re so shocked they do nothing and they just become a victim. Because they never thought about it before. They never thought, what would I do? What would I do in this kind of situation?

So that’s the first thing is you need to just mentally rehearse, mentally practice the common types of situations. For example, criminal situations, maybe someone on the street coming up attacking you. Maybe someone trying to break into your house, that’s another more common one.

You should think about this, how would you handle it? What would you do in those situations? What would be the smart thing to do? Maybe read some articles, watch some videos about these topics. What do people recommend that you do in these situations?

Natural disasters, that’s another one. In fact, that’s one I personally need to think about, living in Japan a lot of the time and there are a lot of earthquakes in Japan. And probably we are not prepared to deal with an earthquake.

So I need to think about, oh, what if there was an earthquake? In an earthquake maybe there’s no power, maybe there’s no water for a long time; a week, two weeks. Would you just sit and do nothing? Would you try to get away and go somewhere else?

Maybe you need to have some food and water stored. Most disaster preparation people, experts, recommend that you have several days, even up to a week of water supply in your house bottled, like bottled water for a full week and also enough food to live on for a full week.

Same for something simple like a fire in your house, do you have a fire extinguisher? What would you do if there was a fire in your kitchen? What would you do if there was a fire in your house at night and you woke up and suddenly there’s a fire?

And then think about things like financial disasters. What if the dollar or your currency crashed, suddenly it was not worth much or was worth almost nothing? What if the stock market had a huge crash?

What if there was a big economic crash? How would you deal with it? What would be your first things to do? How would you deal with it in the short-term?

There’s not one right answer to these. The point is to think about it, to think about the possibilities, to think about the possible solutions, the possible ways to get out and survive.

Just so, in your mind, the possibility is real. This preparation can help you so much because then if something does happen, even if it’s not exactly what you imagined, still if some kind of catastrophe happens, you’ll be more mentally prepared, less likely to be paralyzed, less likely to freeze and do nothing. You’ll be more likely to make decisions and act.

The next thing you want to do after you go through these different possibilities— oh, another category by the way, before I go forward, one more category; I would recommend that you also think about relationship disasters.

What’s a relationship disaster? In other words, what if your girlfriend or boyfriend broke up with you tomorrow, just left you? What would you do? How would you handle it? How would you recover? How would you get over it? What would you do in your life? What decisions would you make?

Because a lot of people when this happens, they fall apart. They become completely depressed. Their whole life comes apart. Their whole life is destroyed for a while. You don’t want that.

In the military, I’ve talked about this in previous lessons, but there’s an idea of something called an Ooda loop. This is a kind of slang or jargon. Ooda stands for observe, orient, decide and act.

This is basically the decision-making process in a stressful situation. Something happens and how do you take action? How do you react? What do you need to do to react and overcome the problem?

1. First you need to observe. You need to see what’s happening. You need to see and understand what is happening.

2. Next orient, orient means you need to figure out the meaning. What’s the meaning of this? Well, you need to get the whole situation and understand it.

So, first you observe it. You see what’s happening. Next, you orient, means you understand it.

1. Next decide, you have to then make a decision. What do you do? What should you do? What are the possible actions you could take? Then you have to pick one. You have to make a decision.

2. Then finally you act.

This is the very simple process and you do this again and again and again and again and again.

The point is, the military guys talk about this and other people talk about this too, is that you need to make this process, this four step process as fast as possible.

In emergency situations, in highly stressful situations, in catastrophes or disasters, the faster you can do these four steps, the more likely you will survive, the more likely you will succeed. This also works in business, by the way, it’s not only for disasters. But it’s especially true in emergency situations.

And now we understand why people freeze, because first of all, observe. Some people don’t even realize what’s happening, they take a long time to figure out that the situation is changed.

I mentioned again those situations where maybe criminals run in with guns or terrorists and they start yelling and shooting people and a lot of the people just freeze. A lot of the people don’t even realize what’s happening. It takes them too long, several minutes to even understand that they’re in danger, to even understand that it’s a terrorist attack. In that kind of situation, minutes are very, very long, it’s too long.

And then orient, to understand the meaning of it. So the observing, seeing what’s happening, because a lot of people are on their phones. They’re not even aware of the danger and the guys pull out the guns start shooting. The orient to understand the meaning, they don’t understand the meaning. They’re confused.

They don’t understand there’s a big danger and then decide. They just don’t decide. They don’t make a decision. Do I run? Do I stay still? Do I fight them? They freeze and do nothing. They can’t make a decision and therefore they never act.

Or sometimes people do make decisions and act but they take too long. They wait too long.

So you want to speed this process up as fast as possible. So you see what’s happening, you understand it quickly, you make a fast decision and you act. In emergencies, in disasters, often speed is more important than making the right, exact best choice. In fast emergency situations, often there’s no time to figure out the very, very best solution.

Oftentimes a so-so decision is better than no decision, just acting quickly is often better, it’s usually better than doing nothing. So you gotta train yourself to act, to make decisions and act quickly.

So, we talked about mentally thinking about it. The next step would be mentally and even physically rehearsing. This means practicing, practicing for these situations.

So if you live in an area where there are natural disasters like earthquakes, or floods or tornados or things like that, then you should actually practice. Think about and actually prepare and practice for this kind of disaster.

So, if you live in an earthquake area well, like I said, read about the recommendations. What should you do? Maybe go out and get enough bottled water to survive for a week and buy some dried foods that also could help you live for at least a week, a week of dried food that you can keep for a long time and a week of water, for example.

And then you might even want to practice. You might practice like, oh, imagine there’s an earthquake, what would I do? Maybe you do it with your family, we’re going to get under the table or whatever you’re supposed to do, you could do that and practice it.

Just like in school, remember? We used to have fire drills. I can remember at my school we would have a fire drill. We would practice, oh, there’s a fire in the school, let’s pretend there’s a fire, so all the kids have to line up and then we would go outside to get out of the building to be safe.

That’s a good idea, just preparing for the disaster. So if there was a real fire then all the children and teachers were prepared and they would know exactly what to do. Everyone would line up and they’d quickly get out of the building and be safe. So that’s practicing, rehearsing or practicing.

This is especially true for self-defense, defense against criminal activities, being attacked by people. You don’t want this to happen totally by surprise to you. You don’t want to just hope it never happens.

You need to do some training. You don’t have to become a super tough guy or woman. But you should at least learn some very basic self-defense, basically how to fight and defend yourself a little bit.

Even more important than the fighting part is to learn more about how to see dangerous situations and avoid them. I think for most people that’s the most important thing, so you’re aware.

For example, when you’re in a city you’re not walking around looking at your cell phone, because you’re an easy target. Instead, your eyes are up, you’re looking around, you’re looking for people who maybe look a little dangerous.

You know, you’re careful to avoid certain situations, like say maybe at night avoid walking down dark streets or into dark parking lots. Maybe you have some basic tools for safety.

For example, like having a tiny little flashlight is a good idea, a strong one that you could carry with you at night. So, if you’re walking out to your car or walking home from the train station, you could actually just turn the flashlight on and shine it in the dark areas, see if somebody’s standing there.

Simple stuff like this, just practice doing it.

Also, you might want to have a quick escape plan. A lot of people who talk about survival and surviving natural disasters and catastrophes, recommend leaving, getting out of the area as fast as possible, instead of just sitting and hoping for help.

So, if that’s your plan then you would need to maybe have a bag already packed and ready to go. It would have water in it, maybe a water filter, would have maybe a flashlight with some lights, it would have some dried food in it, enough clothing to keep you dry and warm, and a map.

You’d have to know, where would you go? How would you get out? If you’re in a city, how would you get out of the city quickly and get to a safer area? If that’s your plan, you need to know it and practice it a little bit. Mentally practice it, at least mentally practice it.

And the same financially, even though again we all want to hope that there’s not a financial disaster, it’s good to think about it. What if this happened? What if that happened? Think about the possible disasters and how would you protect yourself against each of them?

And that’s usually enough. Just by doing those steps you will be far ahead of most people.

The problem is most people don’t want to think about terrible things happening. They just put it out of their mind to avoid it because it’s not fun to think about, it’s scary to think about.

So most people are like, oh, I don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to think about it. Which is fine as long as you’re lucky. But if you’re unlucky, then you’re in big trouble.

Now the good news is you don’t need to live in fear all the time. You don’t need to constantly be afraid of these terrible things happening.

I think the fire drill at school, it’s a good example. I can remember we did fire drills when I was growing up at my schools. We did them every month maybe and it only took about 20 minutes, maybe 15 minutes, it was really short.

It was no big deal. There was no fear involved, it was just kind of done in a very calm way. They would eh-eheh, the alarm would go. We would all stand up, we’d walk out. And that’s the good thing about preparation in fact, because when you prepare like that and you practice it, maybe the first time you don’t know what’s happening, you feel nervous.

But after a while it almost feels boring. As kids we were like, oh, another fire drill okay. Stand up, walk out— but that’s good, because we would train ourselves to do this. So if there was actually a fire we would not have been afraid because we’d practiced it so many times. We would have been calm and just done what we always did during the fire drill.

And that’s the kind of mentality you want to have for all these kinds of disasters. Not to be, oh my God, what if someone attacks me? What if there’s an earthquake? You don’t need to be afraid like that.

In fact, by preparing you actually become more relaxed about it because you know, well, if there’s an earthquake then I know I’ll do this, this and this and we’ll be fine.

If somebody tried to break into my house, I would do this, this and this and we’ll be okay.

You’ll feel much calmer actually, knowing you’re prepared for the disasters, prepared for possible catastrophes, because they do happen. You see on television on the news they happen.

They’re not common. That’s why it’s easy to forget about them. But on the other hand, the negative effects can be horrible, can completely destroy your life and the lives of your family and therefore, it’s worth doing a little bit of thinking and a little bit of preparation for catastrophes. You’ll feel more calm and confident by doing this.

So that’s what I want you to do this month. I want you to go through these different possible catastrophes, disasters and just do what I said. First just think about them. Think about the possible decisions you could make.

Maybe do some research about the ones that are possible in your area or in your home or your town. And then just practice, rehearse a little bit. Just prepare and practice a little bit so that you feel calm and you know what you would do in those situations.

So, by the end of this month, you should be mentally and physically prepared for any of these common big disasters and you should feel a lot calmer about that. You should feel calm and confident knowing that unlike most people you’re prepared for a catastrophe, you’re prepared for these different disasters and you’ll be fine.

All right, I will talk to you next time.

Bye for now.