Exhaustion

It's been quite a trip back.

One one hand, it's easy to become overwhelmed by the scope of the suffering in this town. I have caught myself a few times just staring off into space as my mind attempts to get a handle on what really happened here. It's really hard to comprehend a statement like “Eighty percent of the city flooded.” Or to try and grasp the fact that 26,000 Successions need to be opened.

On the other hand, however, the only way progress is going to be made on any front here is for people to focus on the minutia. Do the task at hand and keep plugging away and maybe one day look up to find that things have improved. Because the entirety of the mess here is enough to make me want to throw my hands up in total abject resignation.

But the danger in that attitude is fairly apparent. As people insulate themselves from the larger crises in the region, simply to survive, they tend to lose perspective on the larger issues of change and progress that desperately need to be addressed.

Immediately after the storm, those of us who lived here at the time hoped with all our being that this destruction would give rise to a rebirth. An opportunity to correct the dangerous course this city had been on for decades.

Unfortunately, this renaissance has yet to come to be, even eighteen months after the storm. When I catch up with old friends who live here now, the question that is on everyone's lips is “Why?” Why haven't we made good on this opportunity. Why isn't the city thriving in a boom economy where massive construction projects supplement the returning tourism industry? Why are any plans for reformation fractured around neighborhoods and sometimes even individual homes?

The most compelling possible argument I've heard since we came down was that the people who are leading this city are not just normal politicians and administrators with a stable homelife. They are rebuilding their own homes in the evenings and on weekends. They have been through the same grinder as everyone who lived in New Orleans before the storm and is fortunate enough to be able to return. In many ways, everyday life here is very similar to combat duty. People work all day to make enough money to go home and work until they drop from exhaustion. And most of these people have been doing this for more than a year.

It's easy to see the flaws in the progress of the city. And the trauma suffered here will continue to affect the progress of this city for years to come in many different ways. But the fact that the people in charge are trying not just to rebuild a city but rebuild their own homes and lives will mean that a “Me first” attitude will predominate here for the foreseeable future.