It was an interesting weekend…

…but first, tea this morning is not tea, it is coffee. I know, I know, I am breaking the mold, but I need a little extra oomph this morning so I am drinking a black Americano from… dun dun dun!… Starbucks. Yep. I’m basic. A lot of people comment about the burnt taste of Starbucks coffee and I do get that criticism, it is not as smooth as my home brew using Cuban roasted beans, but when you need a four-shot pick-me-up, well Starbucks is convenient and there.

I cannot, however, wax poetic about its many different attributes. It has a job to do, it does the job well, and that is all I can ask of it.

Kind of like me this weekend.

What a… difficult weekend. To recap, I was team lead during a Search and Rescue training weekend. The training weekends, this one at least, are to teach new people how to build a fire out of their pack, eat out of their pack, build a shelter using a tarp, navigate using a compass and a map, and learn different search types. It usually consists of two days and a night (this one at least) and includes a mock search at some point.

This training took place last weekend. During an atmospheric river.

I am supposed to be positive about it to save reputation and create a certain optic, but it was tough. The rain never let up: drizzling, full-on downpour, rain, back to full-on downpour… and then hail.

With winds.

So sideways rain, sometimes felt like upwards rain, soaking everyone and everything, including the ferns, salal, huckleberry, and rhododendrons that we had to push through to look for “clues” while wearing a 45-pound pack.

Those evergreen bushes are better than bathtubs at trapping water, which soaks through layers of rain gear, goes down exposed necks, dumps water onto what would normally be waterproof boots, but are no longer when pitted against that stuff.

The very environment was a moral killer.

And that was before you added in people.

Now, to caveat, I always find people difficult. I am very good at navigating people (hello a lifetime of masking!) but people are hard for me. It takes a little bit of extra effort to scan and analyze those around me to make sure that I am picking up on all the nuances, unspoken cues, and nonverbals.

This weekend I was picking up on the cues of individuals who were so negative and so pessimistic that by the end of the day, I was in tears.

And as I analyzed and reanalyzed the weekend over the last three days (as I do) the thought that kept popping up in my head is that people are always hard and when you put people in stressful situations they are not prepared for, the worst comes out. Across the board. I had what would normally be positive, level-headed individuals blaming others for things. I had people in tears that ended up in yelling. I had, what I thought was a friend, not have my back in order to create more positive optics for himself and the unit.

It was… hard.

But this morning as I thought about this post, I realized that people are always hard. There is always drama in the workplace, in families, on the roads. I mean, I don’t know about where you are, but road rage incidents are next level up here in the Pacific Northwest… guns and baseball bats included.

People are so angry everywhere. So frustrated. So stressed. So worried.

I don’t know why I thought a weekend under extreme circumstances would bring out the best in people? Seems naive. Silly. Shortsighted on my part. And I’m sure I wasn’t blameless this weekend. I am sure my attitude sucked at some point, though for the most part I go silent in high-stress, high-drama situations. But maybe that was taken as standoffish, cold, not emotionally available to the individuals who were losing their shit.

Which leads me to my final thought on this; we are a messy, confusing, dynamic species. People are hard, for me, for you probably, and for most, because humans don’t make sense. We aren’t consistent, we act contrary to expectations or even past patterns. We change. We blame. We fight. We can be self-serving, narcissistic, and callous.

But we also show up during an atmospheric river; freezing, soaked absolutely down to the skin, stressed and tired, all to get the training that will allow us to help others. To save someone’s life. To find a missing child.

People can be kind, respectful, talented, and warm. They can go out of their way to help, reassure, and give a hug.

And the most wild part is, both of those… the negative and the positive… can be true of the same individual.

People are hard.

But that doesn’t always mean they are bad. It just means people are endlessly complex and like the endlessly complex idea of something like quantum entanglement, perhaps we (cough cough I) should see it through the lens of wonder.

Eventually. After several more Americanos.

And maybe another week of distance.

Really though, be nice to one another, my dear readers, no matter the differences that might be between you. We are all of the same species, all living on the same Earth, all winning and losing and struggling and succeeding… it is good to remember that sometimes.

Hell, I am writing this so that I too remember it for next time.

Might work. Might not. Worth a try.

Until next time friends, enjoy your hot beverage, whatever that may be, and maaaaaybe give someone a hug. 🙂