Stages of Calamity

A lot is written about the "stages of grief". Grief is a response to loss of people or things through means that are outside our control. When afflicted by grief, society acknowledges that it is not our fault and provides support in many ways. Grief is its own justification.

I believe there is also a different journey on how we deal with "calamities" - bad stuff that happens to us. While related to grief -- we only have so many emotions in our toolbox -- it is very different. For one, calamities are considered "our own fault" unless we can show otherwise (or they are clearly an "act of an angry god" but then, it's our fault we made god angry…). Society supports that we deserve calamities, unless we are clearly a perfect or just superbly lovable person, which most people are not. As such, the general response to calamities is that one should "deal with it", "be strong", "overcome", or simply "get on with life."

In the best case, the stages of dealing with calamities are:

• Despair (With the calamity the inciting event, despair results either because the calamity is huge, or because it is the last straw in a series of smaller calamities.)

• Anger (From the depths of despair grows resistance. Only anger is stronger than despair. Love can soothe it, but only anger can surpass it.)

• Acceptance (I am choosing to make this neutral, but this could also very much be Depression instead.)(Acceptance is not passive. It is simply a state of mind that allows this current reality to exist, to become the canvas for what comes next. Acceptance opens doors towards Action.)

• Hope (I am choosing to make this optimistic, because otherwise, what's the point; the other face of this is Resignation, and publishing that does not offer a light to someone interacting with the work). (The feeling of Hope is necessary to propel us into Action. Action is not a feeling, it's the result of one. Hope is the belief that an Action will result in an outcome that is better than the current state. (This is not the same as defining Hope as Wishful thinking.)

Technical Stuff: All images are composited of photographs that I took, enhanced with some elements derived from the public domain. All work was done in GIMP.
See Process Details.