Bureaucratic Constipation
We’ve heard people call the red tape after disaster ‘the bureaucratic labyrinth’, ‘the monster mess’, and many other things that we cannot print. We’ve seen how the stress of dealing with bureaucracy can be more stressful than the disaster itself. There are times when decisions that affect you and your plans get stuck in the bureaucracy for ages. You face an obstruction and may feel like the motion will never pass. You’re stuck waiting for release. It’s a very uncomfortable place to be. We call this bureaucratic constipation and it is an affliction suffered by many post-disaster.
You’ll fill in forms. Your forms get swallowed or lost. You’ll make phone calls. You’ll listen to a lifetime of elevator music. You’ll be passed from person to person. You’ll try “strategy nice.” You’ll try “strategy grumpy.” You might rant on social media. This happens as systems struggle to meet demand, or are poorly designed or have not adapted to, the post-disaster situation.
Sue Gunningham, in her book All the Days After, about her experience of Australia’s Black Saturday bushfires, describes it this way:
“I sat — waiting yet again. I was unaware back then that many of the years stretching before me would be spent waiting; waiting for information, for statements to be taken, for bureaucratic decisions to be made, for new legislation to be drafted, for the receipt of necessary paperwork, for permission to be given, for objections to be lodged, for applicable approvals, for regrettable rejections, for slow commencements and for even slower completions. Life alone, beyond Black Saturday, keeps its own time. It knows nothing of clocks or calendars or just or unjust.”
It is helpful to expect that bureaucratic constipation will come your way. As hard as it is, it may be that there is nothing else to do but wait. Questions to ask yourself might be: “How am I going to make the wait bearable? Can I redirect my ‘rage against the machine energy’ into things that are meaningful to me while I wait?”
©Hummingly 2021
