Living in Southern California makes for a schizophrenic existence: at once you live in a perpetual, sun-drenched here and now where Tuesday looks like Saturday, April looks like October, and even 1988 is hard to distinguish from 2011. I have always joked that without hardly noticing, one goes from holding a tennis racket or golf club to grasping a cane or a walker, that the days slip away here without reminders from nature how fleetly our little lives are scampering towards oblivion.
One day that does stand out amid the placid decades I've called this area home is January 17th, 1994, when a 6.7 magnitude earthquake struck about five miles from my family's humble brick house in Granada Hills, Ca. I was in Las Vegas this past weekend when the cataclysmic Japanese events occurred, but felt instant sympathy for the victims of that disaster, being acquainted in a small way with the terror and tragedy such incidents leave in their wake.
To have been in Las Vegas when the earthquake and tsunami struck put the event in even greater relief. No town on earth is more dedicated to clockless hedonism and fantasy than the once humble gambling enclave that has morphed into a venal outdoor temple dedicated to crass materialism and 24/7 sensory excess. Seeing vacuous twenty-somethings parading down Las Vegas Blvd. with their yard-long margarita schooners and then watching towns swept away by black water in the hotel room later was yin and yang writ large before one's very eyes.
It's at times like these that one remembers that the ties that bind us are stronger than we think, and that the very ground beneath us is shared by all. I will never forget that within minutes of the earthquake in 1994, neighbors I'd never met before poured into the streets at 4:30 a.m. to commiserate, hug and try to help each other. As the aftershocks rolled through, I found myself in an elderly woman's home looking for her two cats, wondering why I was all of a sudden so fearless and compassionate — qualities I would never have claimed on my resumé prior to that day. For one night at least, we were all members of the same big family….
Nature programs each of us to survive by first looking out for ourselves and those we share genes with, but in the end, we are all cousins of a sort — albeit separated by 2,000 generations. DNA studies suggest that all humans descended from a single African ancestor who lived some 60,000 years ago, which makes the call for compassionate action so compelling right now. "Racial" difference is an an illusion, separation our very undoing.
Whether it's Haiti or Japan or Sudan, now is the time to whip out that Visa card and head to www.redcross.org, or to simply text "Redcross" to 90999 to donate $10 to ongoing relief efforts. The television images of cars and homes floating like toys are incredible to just watch, but don't get too comfortable in that armchair — reach out and help those in need right away. They might just be there for you when your number is called by the fickle Sisters Fate. It's just a matter of time.