The Power of compartmentalization: Coping in a world of chaos

One of the things that’s supposed to be good about becoming an adult, and aging from there, is we gain the ability to compartmentalize. 

Yes, there may be things at home, at work, or in the world that may bother us — gut us even — but we’re largely able to put those feelings in their place and deal with them when we have the time and energy to do so.

That’s a good thing; part of being an adult.

Right?

You know what happened this weekend. You don’t need this space; indeed you don’t need this newspaper, to tell you. It’s out there, everywhere, and it’s awful.

And then, when you think about other places around the world, and even about some things here at home, there’s a lot of awful to go around.

We take each other hostage because of land and god, and then we kill the people we take.

We attack and attack and attack a nation that exists on land our holy book says is ours, and then we hide amongst civilians when they come for us.

We retaliate against those who kidnapped us, bombed us, and sent missiles into our land. Our holy book says this lands is ours, so we go after them. And because of where they are, civilians die. But we don’t stop. 

And neither do they.

Elsewhere, we decide, because one of us has a whim, to invade a neighboring country to take it over, conquer it, make it ours.

No holy books this time, just the kind of megalomania that took over parts of Europe starting in 1939. It took most of the rest of us to put a stop to the ruination those whims wrought then.

What will it take this time?

When we develop our compartmentalization skills, hopefully they extend to the internet, especially to social media, where, with respect to both of the above mentioned horrors, some of us post raw images and videos of people being blown into flecks of flesh and splintered bone.

Or else we see the aftereffects of a missile attack in which someone’s head is blown off on a park bench while they sat next to their mother.

Unimaginable? Don’t have to imagine it. It’s right there, in your algorithm-curated feed, whether you want it there or not.

Maybe we’ve gotten too good at compartmentalizing when a swipe of our thumb across glass can banish such an image, and the human disaster causing it, from our minds.

Assuming it ever made it that far.

Perhaps you might like to confine your thoughts, and your compartments, to the home front. Seems reasonable, and maybe the scope of what you might have to ignore is somewhat smaller, by volume, but the kinds of things you’ll have to store away are no less abhorrent.

Here, we shoot each other, in large numbers, for no reason, and the news cycle for each slaughter no longer lasts the day.

Here, men who’ve never gotten what they thought the world owed them take their over-the-counter cannons to schools and turn little boys and girls into hamburger and red mist.

Then a ghoul selling ground whalebones as medicine says it didn’t happen for 10 years and no one does a thing about it.

Yes, there was a judgment; damages awarded. But can any amount of money make up for a screaming egg telling you your murdered child never existed?

That’s what we do here.

Here, we let one man, whose entire adult life has been dedicated to fraud and preening, destroy one of our two major political parties in less than a decade, then we let him set the agenda for what we’re going to talk and post and tweet about.

Every day.

For that one, you can blame the national media, regardless of slant, at least much as the cartoonish demagogue himself.

Here, there’s a lot to compartmentalize, a lot to thumb past, a lot to willfully ignore. And sometimes, like when what happened over the weekend happens, it feels safest and sanest to just sit on a couch, with a remote in hand, and roll our eyes at how ridiculous the expectations on House Hunters tend to be.

You’re not going to get three full bathes, open concept, no projects, and a pool just outside Chicago for $300,000 max, Mr. and Mrs. Bluesky. Forget it.

Compartmentalization, as we’ve discussed it here, is really a form of comfort, maybe even of retreat. We adapt the way we do as we age because, if we didn’t, we might just walk into the ocean en masse for how hopeless so much of the world feels.

So we cope. And sometimes we take action. We protest. We demonstrate. We vote. We get some kind of resistance out into the world to try to combat the worst of what human nature can be.

Rarely will it ever feel like enough. But it’s important to do it, however it’s done.

Maybe the best way to think about it is not as compartmentalization, or willful ignorance, and certainly not as desensitization.

Maybe the best way to think of it is doing what’s necessary to live in this world, make our way another day, and be the best versions of ourselves for us, our families and the world beyond.

What if we all did that?