I didn’t think I’d be taught a lesson on the human spirit during a trip to New Orleans.
Between a journalism conference and booze-filled excursions down Bourbon Street, I started thinking about the city I was excitedly discovering.
Our drive from New Orleans International Airport into the city featured a quick drive-by of the Caesars Superdome, a stadium most famously inhabited by the New Orleans Saints of the NFL. Instead of a thought resembling “Oh hey, that’s where the Saints play,” my mind conjured up the idea that during Hurricane Katrina, the Superdome was a refuge from the devastating act of nature.
From there, I’d have thoughts and comments that it was weird to think that this city, its surrounding parishes and the state, itself, were covered from 10-to-28 feet of water just under 20 years ago.
I was three years old when Katrina made headlines. I have no recollection of the event. Since then, the country has watched Hurricanes Sandy, Michael, Harvey and most recently Helene and Milton wreck areas of the United States.
Widespread natural disasters are fairly uncommon in Michigan. Yes, we get tornadoes and blizzards, but we certainly don’t experience the direct and ultra-devastating effects of hurricanes.
So when I imagine a city or state under water or any sort of mass devastation, I am in the dark. How the hell do people recover? How do you even start grasping rebuilding after something like that?
Katrina claimed 1,392 lives and totaled an estimated 125 billion in damages. That’s a simple line that’ll clue uninformed people in how bad Katrina was on a basic level.
The stories of infrastructure failure, inadequate government response and misinformation of lawlessness still don’t even begin to tell the full story of a mass tragedy.
Even when researching my Superdome-based catalyst, reading into the horrific conditions only just now further clued me into that specific story.
So, I’ll ask again with more urgency and confusion. How can anyone “bounce back” from a devastation so large? Even with Hurricanes Helene and Milton? How does one get back up and keep going?
There is a meme that pops into my head every once in a while. It shows a pixelated photo of a cat captioned as “the indomitable human spirit” dunking a basketball over a player, captioned as “the indifferent cruelty of the universe.”
As silly and stupid as it sounds, this offers insight into who and what we are as humans. That phrase of “the indomitable human spirit” is the key to understanding.
We, as humans, have this unstoppable course of action. We have to do something. It’s embedded within the human spirit to get back up.
That “getting back up” comes in different forms. It’s purely metaphorical, similar to the idea of “getting back on your feet.” To get back up is to continue, it’s to survive. It manifests itself as an individual’s spirited desire to return to what’s normal. The human spirit is an individual’s built-in thermostat.
In this case, the ideas of “recovery” or “rebuild” are complex with natural disasters. I cannot pretend roughly a month after Helene and Milton, or even 19 years post-Katrina, most things were even remotely healed. Scars can last a lifetime, even ones in the metaphorical sense.
Regardless of a federal response in natural disasters, which is often lacking due to whatever bureaucratic reason that is served to a broken community, survivors stood up and began to pick up the pieces of what’s left.
It’d be irresponsible for me to act like there’s a total “happily ever after” post-disaster. For example, suicides and mental illness jumped in New Orleans post-Katrina. Some still haven’t truly recovered and perhaps they never will.
Take my weekend trip with a grain of salt. I don’t live there. I’m not familiar with the day-to-day ongoings of New Orleans. However, what I witnessed was a bustling city with some of the best nightlife I’ve experienced in my young life.
This city, and any surrounding cities and parishes, had to keep going. The people here kept going. That shows me that any minor inconvenience that has anchored me down emotionally was not a big deal. I’ve never experienced a complete stripping of everything I’ve had and known. I hope I don’t, either.
Some of the folks here did experience some of the worst that the indifferent cruelty of the universe had to offer. But they’re still here in part to a valiant human spirit. With that in mind, my message is this: There’s absolutely no reason to not get back up.