So there’s going to be an earthquake, and a really, really big tsunami, and this New Yorker article has been spreading like wildfire.
I’ve always had an earthquake phobia. I don’t entirely know where it came from, but I think it’s from when I was a kid in the 1994 earthquake that hit L.A. I remember waking up because it felt like someone was violently shaking the headboard of my bed back and forth. I ran downstairs to find where my mom was, and was met by her and my grandma. The fountain in my grandma’s house (yeah, she had a fountain in her house) had cracked right in half.
I remember as a teenager going on road trips to Vancouver and being terrified of going in any underground parking garages, my best friend constantly telling me to calm down.
I remember in my early 20s moving to San Francisco, my earthquake nightmare. And then earthquake after earthquake hit. They were small, but each time they left me feeling desperate and helpless. The first one was when I was living on a boat parked behind Pier 50. I was in my cabin which was underwater, and felt the entire place vibrate. The next one I was in my friend’s apartment and it felt and sounded like a semi-truck had crashed into the building. The next one I was laying in bed in an Airbnb on Broderick Street and the building softly rattled like a truck had driven by. Another one, I was sleeping on my friend’s couch and a 6.0 hit Napa Valley. From San Francisco, I remember sitting up and seeing the white walls wave back and forth like they were doing the wave. Strangely, I don’t remember ever feeling any earthquakes in my own apartment. But I remember studying the cracks running outside the front door, and part of the ceiling that was sinking in the living room, and knowing exactly where the emergency kit was located under the bed in case I would be stranded on my back porch for days and days. It never happened, thankfully.
After so many small earthquakes, I eventually got over my earthquake phobia. Not that each time I didn’t still become fearful of the thought of the earthquake having been stronger, but eventually, I stopped thinking about it on a daily basis. Eventually, all my anxiety surrounding earthquakes went away. Eventually, I began to understand that San Francisco gets 2-4 earthquakes per day and that this was a good thing, because with each little earthquake, the pressure of the two plates pressing up against one another was lessening. Lots of little earthquakes started to feel like good news.
Here I am now, living between Vancouver, BC and Seattle, WA, and we don’t get lots of little earthquakes. And this very well written but very terrifying New Yorker article has been circulating all over the Internet about the doom coming to Seattle, and it doesn’t leave me feeling afraid…
it leaves me feeling sad.
It leaves me feeling sad because I don’t want fear to control my life. I know I live in an earthquake zone, I know I could very well die in the big one, but I also know that I could die in another earthquake while on holidays, or get hit by a car, or from some disease. All of the above would suck, but eventually, one of the above, or some version of the above, will be inevitable. And I just can’t let whatever the inevitable is influence my desires to experience life to its absolute fullest.
It took me a long time to get to this realization. I felt like I had overcome my earthquake fear and then this article started circulating and people on Facebook started debating it and predicting the doom of all of us Pacific North Westerners, and suddenly, in the same way an earthquake ripples, fear started to ripple back into my body and heart.
I asked Eric about it, curious to know his thoughts. We’ve decided Seattle is where we want to be right now (or at least for the first few years of our marriage), but I couldn’t help but wonder if we were setting ourselves up for disaster. I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, but his answer surprised me. It was something along the lines of,
When I take my last breath, I know I will have lived a full life. I know I will have served the time I was always going to be given on this planet, and that in itself is a huge blessing. I cannot control how long I will live, but the fact that I was given even just one breath on this earth makes me happy.
Eric is a huge example to me of someone who lives each day to his fullest. His answer touched on life and death in such a real way that it comforted me.
Because it’s true.
Death is something we fear. Death is something I hate thinking about. Death is something I cannot comprehend. But death, as natural as life is and as natural as love is, is also natural. Death is this incredibly painful and strangely beautiful thing.
I don’t really have a conclusion for my thoughts, I just know that the decisions I make, the life I live, the passion I have for life… I don’t want these to be limited due to fear. I want to live my life to the absolute fullest. I want to recognize each and every day as a blessing and a new adventure to experience. I want to not be afraid and let life happen and find things to celebrate even when I’m mourning. I want to feel each breath and know that life is short and temporary, and I am blessed to be here. I want to be prepared, and take precautionary steps and make responsible choices, but I also want to know that life isn’t perfect, and it’s indeed, so fragile, and to just do the best I can.
I love the Pacific Northwest. I’ve lived in so many places, but the PNW is my favorite. It breaks my heart at the thought of it crumbling, but it breaks my heart even more at the thought of leaving it. It’s like love. What’s that saying, it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? I guess that’s how I feel about living here. I’d rather live and love and have faith and know my life is full.
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Thank you, Kara, for helping inspire this piece. I love all of our conversations.