this is only a test

“Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath.  Stress is an ignorant state.  It believes that everything is an emergency.  Nothing is that important.  Just lie down.”

— Natalie Goldberg

I have to laugh at myself sometimes.

The sirens for the Oconee County nuclear station went off this morning.  A little over an hour ago, actually.  Even after a year of living here, those air raid sirens still freak me out… and much more so when I cannot find my calendar which tells me when the tests are scheduled.

I’m glad they test the emergency sirens periodically; I want them in top-notch working order.  And I’m glad they send out a calendar at the beginning of each year to inform those of us who live here when the tests will be.

But when you can’t locate your calendar and those sirens start up, shrilly slicing the silence into sharp shreds of anxiety, well, let’s just say that living within the 10-mile radius of a nuclear power plant can be unnerving.

My mind was simultaneously conjuring up maps of evacuation routes, trying to remember where the cat carriers were stored, and berating me for not having gone to the health department to get our free doses of potassium iodide for use in the event of a radiation leak.  (Note to self:  seriously, Mer, go and do this today.)

The mind’s eye was also playing rather touching outtakes from the movie in which F. and I suffer and die from radiation poisoning.  Faintly ridiculous, but there you have it:  ego freak-out stew.

A simple Google search reassured me that this was merely a routine, scheduled test of the equipment to notify us of an emergency.  Directly after I read the pertinent information, the sirens quit screaming, and blessed silence returned.  It was all over, and in exactly three minutes my ego had taken my entire body up to def-con 3.

I walked into the bedroom, and there lay Leo, not in the least disturbed by the idea of imminent disaster.  His paws were curled just so over his head, and without even waking up, he rolled at a perfect angle to invite belly rubs as I approached.  I reached down into that soft, thick fur and then lay down beside him, and I felt everything slowly relax and return to neutral.

If this was a test of presence and awareness, I failed utterly.  And yet I didn’t feel sad about it as I lay there beside my Zen-master kitty.  The whole incident had been strangely freeing.  I actually felt like giggling.

How many times do I do this to myself in life situations where the consequences of my worries coming true would be far, far less threatening than a nuclear disaster?

And how often do any of those worries actually materialize?

Hardly ever.  Some minuscule percentage.  Most of the time, the worries consist of me reacting to my own ingrained thought patterns.

This is only a test, indeed.

“Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.”

Natalie Goldberg quotes