Hurricane after Hurricane

October 9, 2024. I am checking the news once again. Fast and furious, Hurricane Milton is approaching Florida. The white spiral on the screen swirls and swells. The headlines announce each increase from Category 3 to 4 to 5. As the storm grows, terror, angst, and feelings of helplessness multiply. How vulnerable we humans are. And how oblivious we are to our vulnerabilities. We have SUVs, HD smart TVs, AI assistants, virtual reality games, wireless home security systems, all this technology, and yet we are made of skin and bones. We cannot withstand the force of 150-plus mph winds.

I refresh the page and read that Tampa Bay's mayor has warned that when Milton hits, single-story homes will become coffins.

I follow updates, the impossible traffic facing those fleeing and the incalculable risks borne by those staying behind. Meanwhile, I am far from the threat, across the continent, vacationing on an idyllic island in the Pacific Northwest. I walk out to the deck and glance at the waters. It is low tide. Then I return to my phone, refreshing the screen to see new predictions for landfall in Florida.

I have become familiar with this pattern in recent years, witnessing my own tumbling deep into the rabbit hole of news cycles. I see it in slow motion, as if in a movie where the camera's focus goes from the calm Pacific to turmoil flashing on the screen. This impulse to constantly check the news for updates on disasters feels like an addiction. I click, compulsively read headlines, jump from website to website, losing myself in the narrative of the catastrophes: environmental, corporate, political. “I want to know what is happening in the world,” I tell myself in self-defense. “I need to know, I am a citizen, a human being, after all.”

What I read—wars, famines, disasters, never-ending hostility, hatreds—I try to keep to myself. My kids are young; I want to shield them while I can. Yet on the eve of Milton, I relinquish control. I tell them about the approac