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| If you had to leave the building right now, where do you go? |
“You should improve your impulse control.” Usually, that
means restraining our impulsive purchases. Turn off the “one-click ordering,”
don’t “stop by for your free test-drive,” and ignore everything offered you at
the grocery store check-stand. Those are good steps to take, especially if you
find that you’re headed toward an eventual storage locker rental.
But there are other impulses that are essential to our
health and well-being. When backing out of a parking spot, or changing lanes in
traffic, feel free to respond quickly to the sounds of beeping horns or
shouting pedestrians. It’s appropriate to duck or turn in response to loud,
sudden noises. Definitely dive for the toddler who’s managed to unbuckle the
safety belt and stand up in the shopping cart. Don’t let those occasional
spikes of adrenalin go to waste. React.
But not all our reactions are intuitively appropriate. That is, some impulses may not result in
the best outcomes. The adrenalin rush fuels our need to fight, to flee, or to
freeze. Sadly, though, it does not always lead us to choose correctly among
those options. In an emergency, we often find ourselves needing to act without
thinking through the potential consequences of our actions, and the results can
be very different. For example, if the pedestrians shouting at you are warning
of what you’re about to hit—the brakes are the better choice. If they’re
warning of what’s about to hit you—you might want the accelerator.
Prevent Emergency Decisions
Emergencies are an inescapable reality. There will be
moments in which we need to act immediately in order to prevent damage or
injury to others or ourselves. But even in those moments, we do not have to
make emergency decisions, if we have already decided what we will
do in case of a particular emergency.
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| Do yourself and your loved ones a favor: complete and file your advance directives. |
As a bank teller, I was trained and drilled in the actions
to take in the event of a bank robbery. When a man leveled his pistol at me
through the window one day, despite the adrenalin-fueled impulses I felt, I
followed the protocol that we had practiced. The need to focus my mind on
“doing this the way I was taught” helped prevent me from fighting, fleeing, or
freezing. The correct response was to calmly follow-through on the requests
made by the man holding the gun.
Later, though, as a police chaplain, I was reminded
frequently of the potential risks of accompanying our officers into the field.
One night on a hotel balcony, several occupants of a particularly rowdy room
wanted to join the officer and me in the narrow, confined space outside their
door. The officer repeated his request that only the one we were to contact
should come out, until a young man inside the room called me by name.
Inexplicably, the officer let him come out to visit with me. A moment after,
when those inside the room decided that wrestling with an armed law enforcement
officer seemed like a good idea, the young man of my acquaintance, now behind
the officer, began to reach for the officer’s pistol. I remember thinking about
my training, but I didn’t think about it until after I had taken the appropriate measures to restrain the subject.
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| I'm not sure "See Your Chiropractor" belongs above "Notify Your Insurance Company," but you get the idea. |
Not every emergency involves firearms. But almost every
emergency can be anticipated. The necessary decisions can be thought through,
and preparations for various contingencies can often be made. In three very
common situations, though, I find that there has been almost no forethought,
much less preparation. Our fantasy is often that “we’ll never have to make that
decision,” which we often phrase, “we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.” Most of us will face a chasm or two like these
in the course of our lives. Don’t wait until you’re there to realize that there
is no bridge.
Childbirth Complications
We can spend most of an evening in some circles discussing,
theoretically and hypothetically, “Do we believe that abortion should be an
option if and when a mother’s life would be endangered by continuing to carry
her as-yet-unborn child?” I’m sure there are plenty of interesting opinions we
could share over dinner. But when the doctor says, “I can’t save them both.
What do you want me to do?” the answer is time-critical. When our son was just
about to become the subject of such a conversation, the doctor had already
worked out the way he was going to phrase it. “I’m going to have to break him,
or her, or both.” We were within thirty seconds of having to give him an
answer. But since he was our third child, we’d had plenty of time and
opportunity to discuss what we believed. We literally had the answer ready
before (several years before) the
doctor needed to ask the question.
Complications at the Other End-of-Life
There is almost no end to the research, education, and
information available on the techniques and technologies that continue to
complicate what has never been a simple subject: how hard do we want the
medical community to work before they let us die? In polite company we might
ask, “To which among the many
life-prolonging therapies, procedures and medications would I feel comfortable
submitting myself or a loved one? From which of them would I hope my loved ones
protect me when I am no longer able to make my own wishes known?” This needs to
be discussed in detail, and more frequently than you might think. New options
are constantly becoming available. It would be good to hear about them from
your doctor, at least sometime before he needs to turn to your assembled family
and/or friends and ask, “What was her preference? Do we hook her up, or let her
go?”
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| An excellent resource for putting together your advance directives. |
Planning for Violent Crime
Would-be pacifist that I am, I frequently contemplate, and
discuss as often as anyone will allow, “How do I feel about the terrible
possibility that I might have to employ violence in response to violence toward
myself? toward others? toward my loved ones?" The time to decide whether
you’re willing to use force in response to force is before you ever face such circumstances. Simply put: hesitate in
deciding and you might as well not decide. Even a momentary delay will usually
prevent any subsequent action from being effective, no matter how extensive
your planning and training may be. I mean to address here, however, only those
momentary circumstances in which immediate action must be taken to protect
yourself or others. In communities where law enforcement resources and
responses are limited, these questions apply primarily toward criminal
behaviors. For others, where law enforcement resources and responses are
excessive, the same questions apply in our approach to law enforcement officers
themselves. In both cases, however, advance preparation leads to more careful
response, whether we choose to support, to obey, to resist, or even to confront
those threatening violence.
In part two, I’ll discuss the second of the two ways to make
better emergency decisions. Even more important that what we do ahead of a crisis is what we do amidst the crisis.
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