Life in the Cone of Uncertainty
... Storm warnings, sandbags, and a sweet dog
It’s hurricane season. Which, to be precise, [officially] begins each June 1 and [officially] ends on November 30, so we might just call it “the Hurricane Half of the WHOLE year.”
Which is to say, we’re checking the weather a lot lately.
As a transplant from Texas, all I know for sure is that hurricanes don’t behave like tornados. Both are intimidating but with different personality styles. Tornados show up and crash the party with little or no warning. Meteorologic advances give us a heads up earlier than the weatherman of my childhood, but you still don’t get much time to hunker down once the sirens start howling.
Hurricanes, on the other hand, sort of dilly-dally. They can be slow, uncertain, dawdling. They taunt, refusing to be specific about exactly how they’ll behave once they get to your neighborhood.
And, until this morning, I thought that this profoundly unthoughtful behavior inspired our current weather-persons to coin the descriptive phrase: Cone of Uncertainty.
It’s a great phrase – accurate but non-committal. Today I learned that it’s not unique to storm nomenclature. Turns out, the concept and the phrase Cone of Uncertainty also appears in engineering, construction, the chemical industry, and the software worlds, probably others.
“Note that the usage in hurricane forecasting is essentially the opposite of the usage in software development. In software development, the uncertainty surrounds the current state of the project, and in the future the uncertainty decreases, whereas in hurricane forecasting the current location of the storm is certain, and the future path of the storm becomes increasingly uncertain.”
~ Wikipedia
“Hazardous conditions can occur outside the cone.”
So, let’s review: it can be hazardous inside the cone of uncertainty, and it can be hazardous outside the cone of certainty. Life = cone of uncertainty, and it doesn’t matter if you’re in or out.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but that leaves us vulnerable. All of us. Wherever we are, whoever we are, none of us are immune from storms, all kinds of storms.
So what to do? Gather the sandbags….
(To be clear: I’m not giving any advice regarding hurricanes or any other weather situations.)
How do we navigate life given the potentially stormy, challenging, dangerous, frightening, and thoroughly uncertain realities?
How do we choose hope and energy and connection and courage and compassion and gratitude and love when we can’t be certain everything will be okay?
Just as sandbags and extra batteries and an evacuation plan are essential in the literal storms, we need basic resources for all the metaphorical storms.
I don’t know.
I mean, I don’t know every specific step or decision process. But I do know this:
Hope is more powerful than fear.
Preparation for the potential problem is more effective than panic or paralysis.
Connection and community cultivate courage. We need each other, and we’re better together. In all kinds of storms.
Checking in on each other helps.
Music never hurts.
And a sweet dog. Not required, but def a bonus.
Storms come and go, and new seasons bring new storms. Some storms batter us more than others, some teach us more than others, some we simply endure and maybe come out stronger or wiser.
I miss the sweet man who weathered storms with me for almost a decade. Some of those memories are tender, some are funny or silly, some a little vague as time smooths the edges. All of them are treasures. This week, Tropical Storm Debbie invites memories of our first lowcountry “weather event”, in which we were awestruck and mesmerized, watching the water rise and then recede. It wasn’t exactly a storm, but it was a moment shared. The dog napped through it, oblivious.
Most of the time I’m okay with being alone, but storms (all kinds of storms) are a degree or two more difficult for me, being solo again. Not awful, just a little harder. But I have this sweet dog, and his loyal presence is a quiet gift. The dog doesn’t make things easier but he reminds me that being solo isn’t the same as being alone, and I’m not alone. (He’s napping through this one too, the epitome of “non-anxious presence.”) None of us have to be alone, even when we’re the only people in the house.
And none of us have to be alone in this Cone of Uncertainty we call life, with or without a pet.
We have each other. Reach out. Make the call. Write the text, (or maybe even a real letter!), smile at the stranger, bake the cake, turn up the music and sing or dance. Or sit in silence. Draw the picture, write the poem, paint the fence. Listen to the rain. Listen to the wind. Listen to your heart.
This life, this crazy cone of uncertainty, brims with wild unpredictable energy and possibility! Can you imagine how boring and blah a Cone of Certainty would be? We may have to deploy the sandbags and batteries now and then, but we get to embrace the whole shebang and celebrate this glorious wonder, this gift of being.
Sandbags and dogs. Doesn't get better than that! Thank you for always perfectly expressing what I need to hear at the exact moment you somehow know it needs to be said.
Nicely said!