SUNN Post Exclusive
How should you react when your city is burning?
Despite what you might think is the correct response, I laughed. When my friends called me to the outdoor staircase to watch the grayish-orange smoke billow into the L.A. sky, we laughed.
It didn’t feel real yet. We had just gotten out of English, history, math — and we were about to return for the next class. I guess we reasoned that, since we were still in school, the fires couldn’t touch us.
We didn’t know then that the fires would cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damages. We didn’t know that neighborhoods and livelihoods would turn to ashes over the next few days. We didn’t know that lives would be lost.
Soon enough, our delusion gave way to panic. The shift became obvious. As we sat together in the school library, my classmates began fielding anxious calls from their parents, downloading fire-tracking apps, and obsessively checking the news to make sure their community, then their neighborhoods, then their houses, hadn’t burned down. I watched them make lists of things they hoped could be saved while evacuating — sports equipment, figurines, homework — as they texted friends in other schools to make sure they were safe, as they asked their parents if their pets were still alive.
Luckily, my house wasn’t in the evacuation zone, but I ran through my own mental checklist just in case. What would I save? Besides the obvious necessities — water, toiletries, and clothes — for me, the priority was books.
I’ve always loved books. The more I read, the more I feel an even greater sense of the importance of recorded text. What I wanted to save wasn’t the books I’d already read or those that had sentimental value, but the new ones that friends had gifted to me. Each held a hopeful future, the opportunity to learn and absorb more.
What I remember most about my own state of mind that first day wasn’t a sense of hope and rescue, but a potent, all-consuming feeling of helplessness.
I wanted to do something, but what?
I could start by making my friends feel better. Cracking a joke would be insensitive, right? All I could do was follow my friends’ leads. When they made a joke, I laughed. When they seriously questioned what the future would look like, I speculated with them. When they left behind their headphone charger in the evacuation, I handed over mine. If I could bring them even a small amount of additional comfort with a cord, I would.
As a friend left the library that afternoon with my charger in hand, the thought that would recur over and over in the coming days began to echo and has since never stopped: Am I doing enough?
I wasn’t new to this concern or the tight feeling it brought in my chest. I felt it when my Grandma died during COVID, and all I wanted to do was console my parents but didn’t know how. Sometimes, I still hear my mom’s sobs, and my heart still drops like it did back then.
And throughout these perilous 2020s, that same question of “Am I doing enough?” seems to come up consistently across people and platforms alike. I’m not alone.
No matter the issue, what I’ve found to help quell my worries and doubts is to first act as a listening ear and be ready to have difficult conversations. While this goal may appear simple, our generation has counteracted America’s overwhelming sense of pessimism with our intense, intricate meme and “brain rot” culture. There’s nothing inherently wrong in coping with difficult or depressing situations using humor — because, by God, we’ve lived through a lot of depressing situations, from COVID and quarantine, to George Floyd’s murder and the overturning of Roe v. Wade — but humor can become a problem when we’re unable to form or share opinions without our legitimate concerns being brushed aside.
I’m more than aware that changing this habit is easier said than done, especially since we tend to fall back on the same coping mechanisms that work and help us to avoid stress. Many times, I’ve found myself completely deflecting from conversations that require uncomfortable levels of vulnerability. We must remind ourselves that uncomfortable conversations often lead to deep connection and understanding. We must bravely take the first step and inspire others to follow.
In the face of personal tragedy, try to digest and understand what you’ve heard, too. Focus on how your feelings have been affected, and only then act. If it’s too much physically or emotionally to haul supplies off of and onto trucks to help those displaced by the fires, you could send a modest contribution to fund the organizations themselves hosting those drives. If you can’t afford to send money, you could use social media to highlight vetted organizations so others can. No act is too small.
And people here have acted. What has most surprised me about the response is the sense of community that, as a new resident, I thought L.A. just didn’t have. We all seem to live so far from each other, literally and figuratively. The wealth gaps are so disparate, and countless numbers of unhoused people are cast aside and ignored every day.
But this all changed when I saw and personally experienced people reaching out to each other and volunteering their houses, guesthouses, and garages for storage or refuge. When my family and I pulled up to a volunteer drive, we saw cars, trucks, and U-Hauls filled with supplies lined up around the block. I quickly realized that while L.A. still has its downfalls, in the city are glimpses of good that we must hold onto.
The L.A. fires won’t be the last tragedy my generation will have to face head-on. Declining literacy rates, the Earth’s rising surface temperature, and an increasingly polarized political climate are all issues we’ll have to tackle in the future. We’ll need to bring our unique sense of humor to internet culture, but also our extreme capacity for empathy and action to whatever crisis comes next.
No matter what, we must remember our shared humanity. We must not and cannot wait for another disaster to bring us together, and we can’t let our worst moments define us. Instead, let us be defined by our work. Let us be defined by our kindness, devotion, and distinctly human passion for each other and each other’s well-being.
Perhaps most importantly, know that what we’re doing is enough as long as we’re trying to be our best selves every day. We are enough just by being there for each other. Both before and after the fires, we are all we have.