A friend loaned me a library book he described as compelling. The book was so well regarded that, when he tried to renew it to give me more time to read it, he couldn’t.
Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry is an account of the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster along the east coast of Japan that killed thousands and caused a malfunction in nuclear plant reactors that endangered thousands more. The facts of the tragedy serve as background for the specific event Parry investigated (which was lost in American reporting of the disaster); 74 school children at one school died when there was ample opportunity for them to reach safety.
As I read the book, I was struck by a question the author posed over and over again, implicitly and overtly: what if? I won’t spoil the plot and findings for you, hoping that you will read the book. Parry’s account of the specifics of the story prompts one to think beyond the school and the children to consider the habits we form, the traditions we honor, the choices we make.
The same question formed in my mind after the monumental screw-up by Hawaii state officials one Saturday that caused anxious people even greater anxiety they did not need. Media made sure the world heard incessantly, for several news cycles, how panicked the population was over the message that a ballistic missile was on its way to Hawaii.
Many friends asked us how we reacted. We told them we laughed, believing the matter to be a hoax, a hack, or incompetence. No Chicken Littles at this address!
Later, we got angry, not just about the incompetence but also over the hysteria that led state officials to think that having a warning system at all was necessary. (That’s a different conversation.) People of a Certain Age remember living with a real nuclear threat, if our government was to be believed, one day in October 1962, one that would presage war and multiple exchanges of nuclear weapons with a country that had stockpiled thousands. So it is hard to get excited about the latest country trying to build a bomb to gain respect, to deter what it thinks are threats to its survival.
Once the anger subsided, that question popped up: what if? One friend declared that she would proceed to eat up all the chocolate in the house. Another said he would take a walk, preferring nuclear incineration over radiation poisoning. Still another would take a swim. No one mentioned “duck and cover,” the exercise we learned in 1962 which would have simply ordained which part of our anatomy would fry first.
What if? That can be an unsettling question. It can also land one in political trouble if you give the wrong answer. Ask Michael Dukakis who responded intelligently but seemingly without passion in the 1988 presidential campaign to a hypothetical scenario involving his wife. In its work with young men during the days of the Vietnam War draft, the American Friends Service Committee counseled against answering that question, if it was posed to you by the Selective Service Administration.
How, they would say, can anyone answer with any degree of certainty how he or she would react if faced with a particular set of circumstances?
What a shame that these two words—what if—can be so explosive or unsettling! What if they only meant that some new possibility was being considered? Hewlett Packard used the words in its advertising as a way to announce its commitment to innovation. Isn’t the question the basis of imagination and inquiry? Don’t engineers live on these words?
The way in which the question can mean such different things illustrate the power of words and the context in which they are used. When the synonym for “what if” is “if only,” seldom does anything good follow. When “what if” asks a person to speculate on possible behavior, it suggests that there is a crystal ball where an answer is about as reliable as the imagery in the ball.
When the words substitute for “imagine” or “let’s try,” human potential is unleashed.
I remain mystified by why the default position so often for we humans in so many situations is fear. A popular expression these days is “prepare for the worst, hope for the best,” and, to an extent, I understand the posture. Sometimes hurricanes threaten Hawaii; having a reasonable amount of food and water in reserve in case supplies are scarce in the days after a storm hits is good planning. Our friends displaced by the fire in Ventura planned what they needed to take in case of evacuation in advance of the need to leave their home, a prudent action.
But we do not live each day fearing that a hurricane will hit us. Our friends do not spend time asking “what if” as they work to rebuild their home, soon to be equipped with new stuff.
“If only” achieves nothing. “Let’s try” gets our imagination in gear to go forward with confidence.
What if we could replace fear as a default?
Daniel E. White
February 5, 2018