It’s been a few months since we ran to the shelters, fearing Iranian missiles or missiles from Hezbollah or Hamas. But the Iranians were the real frightening ones. I was reflecting on that period. And it was one thing to receive missile alerts when we were at home and running to our relatively comfortable, close-by shelter here. It was very different to walk around town, hear the sirens, and have to look for a shelter. Of course, the stress of being around town and looking for a shelter was very, very tough. Just imagine walking around or having a cup of coffee or driving and suddenly there’s a siren and you have a few minutes to figure out the space. On the road was the toughest. You have to find somewhere to park, lay down, cover your head, and hope that nothing lands too close, and get far away from the car because the car could spread a lot of metal.
But I want to focus on the shelters in the city. Often what would happen is we would all run around, looking for a shelter, and people would invite us into their shelters. By the way, lots of apartment buildings kept their doors open all the time so that people could go into shelters. But there was one occasion that somebody saw me. They stepped out, opened the door, and invited me in. I went with them into their shelter. And there we were, a group of strangers, brought together by an alarm, a fear of a missile landing somewhere. And there’s a feeling of stress. There’s no other way to say it. Everybody’s a little worried. What would happen here? What would happen elsewhere? Are people going to be injured? Will somebody die? Is this the last missile? Is more going to come? How many? A lot of stress.
What I found reminded me of old research in psychology. Imagine there’s a bridge, a very, very narrow, shaky bridge over a canyon. They tested people who were walking on that bridge. So, imagine a guy walking across this bridge. And there’s a woman, the experimenter, who catches him, let’s say, in the middle. And she asks him lots of questions about some research—nothing particularly interesting. But at the end, she gives him her phone number with the offer for him to call her to find out the results of this study. Sometimes she meets him at the middle of the bridge where things are shaking the most and people are stressed. And sometimes she meets him at the end when nothing is shaking and he’s already in stable ground. When do you think is the guy more likely to call her?
The answer is on the bridge when things are shaking a lot and much less when he finished crossing the bridge. Now why is that? Well, in the middle of the bridge, the arousal is the highest. The arousal comes from being afraid, but it is attributed to experimenter. They feel their heart pounding; they might be sweating. And they think it’s because the experimenter is just a wonderful person. People who crossed the bridge didn’t really care about the research that much and didn’t want to call. The people who were in the middle also didn’t care about the research, but they cared about the research assistant and felt kind of an arousal toward her and wanted to talk to her.
The same thing happens in shelters. You get into shelters, there’s arousal, fear, anxiety, and some of it creates a wonderful community. Suddenly, it’s us. We care about the people we are with; we share something. Now, I can’t say that I miss those days. It’s been quite a few months since we had the last bombing. But there was a feeling of wonderful camaraderie. There was a feeling of something that united us, that got us together. People helped each other, like the person who opened that door for me. I just wish we could keep that without the missiles.
So sometimes there’s a silver lining even in bad things. In the case of the missiles, it was very, very small compared to the tragedy. But it’s good to recognize that the camaraderie, the caring, the shared arousal, all were quite wonderful.
