don's report archive

by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.

Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

I've developed a new philosophy... I only dread one day at a time.  ~Charlie Brown (Charles Schulz)

Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere.  ~Glenn Turner

If you treat every situation as a life and death matter, you'll die a lot of times.  ~Dean Smith

It’s not healthy that public safety officials in Washington, DC have a severe “Chicken Little” syndrome. Their tendency to overreact to uncertainty has led to terrible mal-adaptations to innocent situations. This causes humongous taxpayer costs, annoying inconveniences for tens of thousands in Washington, the flummoxing and muddling of governmental functions and the creation of tons of stress (if stress could be weighed) for hapless citizens. (Citizens with hap suffer, too.)

Worse, these groundless panic attacks of a very public nature make America look like a country of ninnies. An egregious example of the panic attack mentality was the overreaction May 11 to a Cessna that approached sacred Capitol airspace. On that occasion, safety officials went on “red alert.” They carried on as if the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it was about to be experienced, as represented by an unauthorized, unidentified dinky two-seater Cessna 150 weighing about 1500 pounds piloted by an old man and a student aviator. Fear that the approaching craft might venture too close to or maybe even attack the White House, the Congress, or the Supreme Court gripped officialdom. The New York Times (5/12/05) reported capitol police shouted to stragglers (in other words, those not suitably panicked), "Run, run, this is for real!" Yeah, right. 

You would think bin Laden was heading our way, at the controls of a 747 loaded with Jihadists and virgins, all wrapped in nuclear devices, chanting “death to the infidels.” Congress shut down (quite possibly a good thing), Vice-President Cheney and a couple first ladies went into bomb shelters and the Supremes got out of town, or something. The rest of the population was told to go south. Thus, the media would later show men and women running through the streets. The newspaper photos and radio and TV accounts gave the impression that bureaucrats were in flight, screaming and panicking, wetting their pants and otherwise doing whatever seemed necessary as Armageddon approached in a Cessna. 

This is not good wellness, ladies and gentlemen. Public safety officials, take note, please:  Inducing panic is not only jejune—it’s hazardous to the health of everyone involved. Assuming nobody got trampled or run over by cars, trucks and busses heading south, the stress induced (not to dwell on the aggregate losses of dignity as citizens ran around in circles repenting, lamenting and possibly soiling themselves) is a serious health hazard. Furthermore, inciting panic does not make America or the Capitol safer, rather, it creates disdain for all warnings. (There may come a threat worth soiling ourselves over, but who is going to go to the trouble if previous red alerts proved ridiculous?)

OK, here is the wellness message. Stress is not in the event or circumstance, but the way we respond to it. Public safety officials – deal with the threat. Shoot the Cessna or whatever down, if that’s what seems necessary to make us feel safe, but no more evacuations, no more police urging people to “run, scream, roll on the ground, go south” and all that nonsense. As Mark Twain wisely observed as Halley’s comet neared for the second time in his life, “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” 

If you simply MUST worry about something, pick a threat far enough off that you might be dead before it happens. For example, worry about the fact that astronomers think there’s a two percent chance that a 350 meter-wide rock will collide with Earth on the 13th of April 2029. Compared with a Cessna 150, this worry has style, substance and even class.

Yet, I’m not really recommending you worry about that, either. Instead, I suggest two things:

1. That you stay calm when officials overreact, question whether running south (or any other direction) will really make much difference and leave the evacuation of buildings to Dick Cheney and the first ladies, the Supremes and the Congress, especially the Republicans; and
2. That you always look on the bright side of life.

(Note: This essay will be filed in the archives in the MENTAL DOMAIN under the skill area of stress management. Additional articles related to this theme may be found there.)

(Ed. Note: Views expressed in this and other columns are those of the author and not necessarily those of the SeekWellness Editorial Board.)

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