A great deal of political and social baiting and shrieking goes on in the comments posted below video clips of communities blasted away by disaster.

 
There is a pattern – very predictable – of someone responding with empathy, clearly imagining what it would be like to be waist deep in water in your own home. To be someone staring into an abyss of loss. First come the comments wishing for that person to have the strength to go on. Praying for them to have the help they need to get through this period of loss and destruction.

 
And then comes the brutal comment. The one that people find it necessary to answer. The comment that blames and condemns, that hijacks that moment of solidarity and derails those expressions of support and encouragement. Now, the comments quickly descend into blistering insults, trading spite back and forth beneath the wave of tragedy above.

 
No one posting these brutal comments really believes what they are saying. They are the feral hogs that roam into areas fertile with empathy to crap all over everything and fatten up on the attention. They try to make sure we don’t get too far down the road of solidarity before they hijack that energy. Feeding and crapping. No real reason. Hogs.

 
Delete. Delete. Delete. Delete to oblivion and roll on down the road to figuring out how to be there for one another. You can’t tame a feral hog. Don’t put your attention/energy there.

 
These horrible storms will keep coming. This is our world now.

 
You made whatever decision you made with imperfect information. Trying fiercely to know and do what was best. Stay or go. Trying to reconcile yourself to having a huge responsibility and not enough power to go with it. Facing the challenge of deciding whether to stay or go while feeling small. Trying to make yourself believe home, which has been your safe sanctuary, won’t be.

 
Storms are unpredictable and how you fare is only a small event in a much larger pattern. You are not to blame. We are all vulnerable creatures on a common journey. Disaster and disruption are a part of our journey and very few of us get through life without having the earth fall from beneath our feet at some point. We are human and this is Earth not Heaven.

 
If you see someone struggling, trying to keep afloat in a deluge, reach out and pull them to shore. This impulse to help is our true nature.

 
You are not a feral hog.