A Crisis Doesn't Change People, It REVEALS Them

People have sayings– little truisms about reality or other people that guide how they view things. One such saying is that “absolute power corrupts absolutely“– turns out that’s not true. Power reveals a person because when they have total free choice, if they’re secretly total jerks, they can show it without fear of consequences. Checks on power are therefore a good idea, because some (like a president we won’t name) will take advantage to benefit themselves, even if it harms many others to a significant degree. But not everyone with power will seek to benefit themselves even if it harms others– in fact, it’s been found that good people in power try to share that power and help others with it.

Similarly, there’s this saying that a crisis changes you. I prefer the saying, “A crisis doesn’t change people, it reveals them.” Because, like power, you see who a person really is only after being in a crisis with them. A crisis is an infliction of harm, or the incredible fear of infliction of harm, from outside one’s personal power– disasters of all kinds. What happens when something terrible happens and you can’t avoid dealing with it?

It’s easy to know who I am for that very reason! I’ve been through a rather unrelenting set of crises throughout my life. Acute and chronic illnesses. Emotional violence with threats of physical violence. Economic pinch points up to and including homelessness. Existential threats to one’s understanding of reality. If you’ve read even a little of this blog, you’ll know what I mean. When the stakes are down, I respond. In fact, I respond well before the stakes GO down, because I’d like to be prepared and avoid or soften the blow.

But I’m also acutely aware that people who haven’t really faced deep, let alone repeated, crisis may not have the mental resources it takes to handle and respond well to any new crisis coming over the horizon. People who have had it “too easy” don’t really have much practice at dealing with such things. On the other side of that, people who’ve never had it too easy don’t know what they’re missing and often give in to ennui and cynicism, because crisis is all they’ve ever known, really. They give in and give up and there is a price that all of society has to pay for their descent into darkness.

I enjoy having it easy, no question. I’ve had enough of a taste of a better life that it’s clear to me what the goals are in that way. But I worry about myself that facing too many crises throughout my life has made me too easily vulnerable to both anxiety and depression. I fall apart, but thus far I keep getting up and dusting myself off for another go at things. I worry that at some point I just… won’t be able to do that anymore. Especially if I’m alone. I’m exactly the type of person that people can decide to abandon to my imperiled fate because I may not have a lot to bring to their personal table. I have almost no income and no physical labor to offer. I do my best to offer emotional and spiritual labor, but I can easily burn out when others take too much advantage of this.

I worry the most right now about Cat. She’s had a solidly middle to upper-middle class life (partially financed by her mother’s going into debt) until her mother’s death. Even then, she had some assets to begin a new life with a nice home and land, and a new car. But it was inevitable that her standard of living was going to slip down ever afterwards. Not just because of losing her mother (and never having a spouse to share expenses with) but also because everyone’s standards of living are slipping! We’ve been a nation in steady personal economic decline for the last 50 years!

With all that’s happening now, and into the foreseeable future, crisis will become an ever more familiar visitor to her life. She’s only ever faced ONE real crisis in her life: her mother’s illness and death and having to move afterwards. Now, things are getting ever bleaker, and her response is to become depressed, and– sometimes– to lay the blame at my feet for not being “enough” to make up for her mother’s presence, especially financially.

I’ve learned through abundant practice what to do in a crisis. I know to plan in advance and then deal with it when it comes. I’m not saying I’m great at it, but I don’t have unrealistic expectations of things “going back to normal” after a crisis. Every crisis leaves a mark, and sometimes it’s a permanent one. It’s just the path of the beast, you know? Cat, however, is tempted to lay blame or to pout and threaten to give up. She has surprised me at times, and there are signs she’s getting better at meeting problems and addressing them. But I still worry that she can’t handle the truth.

I try to act as a buffer at some points, and as the voice of harsh reality at others. I get very frustrated when she avoids dealing with a crisis by not taking responsibility for things SHE has to change. She doesn’t want to change– and she doesn’t like being told change is needed because it injures her ego to think she got it “wrong” the first time! I mean, how do you deal with that sort of immature self-centeredness? I worry this means our arrangement is limited.

I admit that if I got an income that was independent and sufficient — I would be very tempted to just get my own place. Notice I didn’t say move in with anyone else? I still can’t handle being alone at night for very long, so that’s a barrier, but having to live with someone I can’t trust in a crisis is very worrisome! I loathe being subject to the whims and moods of people who have more power than I in my own home simply by virtue of having more money because they can work a decently paying job. People are moving in together again, with roommates or with family, because life is no longer affordable for most people to live alone. When people have money, they break up these communities because having the choice to NOT compromise is a true gift.

I always have to compromise. I’ve never had my own way completely in the way most adults get to experience as a matter of course for at least a period of time while single or after a divorce. In this life, I don’t think I’ll get to have that. Maybe next time? Who knows? For now, I’m leery of people in my life with more power, let alone in dealing with a crisis, because life has taught me to expect disappointment.

All I can do is hope that I get surprised from time to time. That maybe crisis reveals more fortitude in people than I expect. And that goes for me, too. Sometimes I fall apart. Sometimes I rise up. It’s weird to not always predict my own responses accurately. However, being open to new truths is crucial. I can’t think it’s over before the final act as it were.