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How's your life?

Tuesday, October 30

By Cindy Stauffer
New Era Staff Writer

 

Driving. Being outside under an open sky. Shopping. Passing a stranger on the street. Getting the mail.

Before Sept. 11, we would not have given these mundane acts a second thought. Today, many of us are thinking about them endlessly.

"That's what terrorism is about," says Scott Schaffer, an assistant professor of sociology at Millersville University. "It's less about doing actual damage than making people fear that actual damage.

"It's all about disrupting people's normal lives."

Life has changed in some very big ways since planes crashed into buildings and anthrax began showing up in the mail. We have had to bury our dead. We are at war now.

Every day seems to bring another threat. Government officials warned us Monday that a new round of terrorist attacks may be planned for the next week but gave no specifics on what the attacks might be or what Americans should do.

Such looming threats have affected even the most routine tasks for some people. And that, experts say, may be the most insidious effect of terrorism.

"We think more before we do something that used to be ordinary," says Nancy Boyd, director of loss and life transitions for the local Samaritan Center. "People are more aware. There seems to be sort of a danger lurking everywhere. There's a lot of fear and anxiety about things we did in the past."

People are reacting in a variety of ways, local experts say.

Some are staying home or drawing nearer to family members. Others are driving more cautiously.

Some people are more friendly greeting people on the street to make a connection and dispel others' fears. Others are less friendly closely scrutinizing someone who appears to be Middle Eastern.

Schaffer says he's noticed his students clustering around the door in classrooms, wanting to be able to make a quick escape.

Local psychologist Bruce Wittmaier says he's heard that people are keeping their gas tanks filled and stashing away gallon jugs of water.

The changes in our everyday behavior all have to do with our desire to gain power over what seems like a shadowy threat, experts say.

"A lot of folks are doing a lot of little things to emphasize the control they do have," Wittmaier says. "You do have control to put gas in your car. You do have control to stay away from things that might be targets. You do have control to save up resources or stockpile water."

In the face of uncertainty, people also are gravitating to things they feel they can still depend on: God, family and country.

"These are things that aren't being questioned," Schaffer says.

Schaffer is somewhat of an expert on the ordinary. He's the editor of the Journal of Mundane Behavior (on the Web at www.mundanebehavior.org), a publication that chronicles everything from facial hair to cafes. He calls it "the Seinfeld of academia. It's apparently about nothing . . . seemingly inconsequential behavior."

But it is this routine behavior that is central to most of our lives, Schaffer says. It is what makes us feel normal.

And what is normal is changing, Boyd says.

"We all need to have a sense of safety in the world," she says. "When we lose our safety, like we did on Sept. 11, it takes us a while to adjust to something that is the new normal.

"There is no new normal. There's just a constant feeling people have of being on edge, waiting for something that's unknown, not knowing where the threats are coming from."

Wittmaier says, "It has changed us. But we have a tremendous capacity to adjust."

Schaffer says the recent events are giving Americans a chance to reexamine the way they live their lives and how they interact with others. "It gives us the chance to say, are we really living our lives the way we want to?"

Boyd says she does not think people will ever completely give up the ordinary routines that define our lives.

Even in Nazi concentration camps, people made the choice to keep living and loving each other, she says.

"It really makes us look for what's deep down in us that overcomes darkness," she says. "The essence of it is the power of love. That's something that no one can take from us the power of love and saying, "I'm going to live life. It's a choice I'm going to live every day.' "