How do you weather a storm? You hunker down. “Hunkering down” means to settle in and prepare to wait out a difficult or challenging situation. It comes from the physical position of crouching or squatting down low for protection or stability. The phrase is used in several contexts. It is most commonly used in a weather-related context. Staying indoors and preparing for storms, hurricanes, blizzards, or other severe weather by stocking up on supplies and avoiding going out. But it can be used for work or focus. Dedicating yourself intensively to a task or project, often isolating yourself to concentrate without distractions. It is increasingly used for economic tough times. Cutting expenses, saving money, and being more cautious during financial uncertainty. Preparing mentally and practically to endure any difficult period, whether it’s a busy season at work, exam time, or personal struggles is about hunkering down. The phrase suggests both preparation and endurance – you’re not just passively waiting, but actively getting ready to weather whatever’s coming your way.
Warning signs are key to hunkering down. Warning signs can refer to many different situations. Health warning signs might include sudden severe pain, difficulty breathing, chest pain, persistent headaches, unexplained weight loss, or changes in mental state that could indicate serious medical conditions requiring immediate attention. Mental health warning signs often involve significant changes in mood, behavior, or thinking patterns – like withdrawal from relationships, dramatic mood swings, persistent sadness, anxiety that interferes with daily life, or thoughts of self-harm. Relationship warning signs include controlling behavior, isolation from friends and family, verbal or physical aggression, extreme jealousy, or patterns of manipulation. Financial warning signs might be mounting debt, inability to pay bills, overspending, or living paycheck to paycheck without savings. Vehicle warning signs could be strange noises, dashboard warning lights, unusual vibrations, or changes in how the car handles. Home safety warning signs might involve electrical issues, gas smells, structural problems, or security concerns. And, of course, weather warning signs include rapidly changing atmospheric conditions, specific cloud formations, sudden temperature drops, or animals behaving unusually before storms.
The warning signs are all there for us now. They are impossible to ignore. In the movie Life is Beautiful, Roberto Benigni found a place in our hearts with his story of using a perfect mixture of will, humor and imagination to protect his young son from the ravages of Nazi Germany in a concentration camp in Europe after he and his family are ripped from their bucolic life if Arezzo, Italy. We happened to be in Arezzo several months ago and it was lovely there. I had forgotten the connection to Roberto Benigni’s masterpiece, but now wonder if it was a sign…a warning sign of sorts to me that we were entering a storm.
All the signs are there for us to see. The world goes through moments when the good hunkers down while the evil rages. It seems to me that we are there at this moment. This morning I read my usual daily report from Heather Cox Richardson and it was like tapping on the barometer and seeing it dip below 27 inches of mercury (the level below which a Category 5 hurricane is indicated). We are in the storm of our lives and there appears to be no escaping it. All we can do, especially as senior citizens who are beyond being able to stand up too tall and resist, is try to weather it bravely. Our world is increasingly in disarray and it is of our own making apparently. It may be time to make this all a game so that our children can survive with their innocence in tact while the world goes through another of its rounds of self-destruction.
I just spent a month with my two blue-eyed granddaughters, watching them look at the world around them with no guile in their hearts and nothing but love for puppies and kittens. It was a wonderful reminder of the indomitable human spirit. When untainted by the realities of the cruel world, the wonder of childhood is still there…at least for these children. And then I think of the poor wretched children in Gaza or the war-torn youth in Ukraine, and I realize how fragile the goodness and innocence of life can be and how much we need to strive to protect it like Roberto Benigni does for his little son Joshua. He survived the horrors of the time by having a father wise enough to know that it was time to hunker down and make a game out of life rather than raging against the storm. In abstraction that feels like a weak cop-out and an abrogation of responsibility to humanity, but the beauty of the story is that anyone looking at Roberto Benigni can see that his efforts at direct resistance would likely be futile and his priority needed to be to save the innocence of his son so that at least he could weather the storm with his soul in tact. In so doing, he comes an heroic figure who is more powerful than any machine gun toting resistance fighter. His fight was not for bread, his fight was for his son’s soul, and, as such, the soul of mankind during an awful and evil storm, a storm that was gripping the world by the throat.
We are standing here now with the hands of Donald Trump, as small and weak as they have been portrayed, around our collective throats. He and his philosophy have altered our reality in the most absurd manner. Down is up and up is down. It makes no sense any more and we are, instead, in the grip of yet another global storm with evil and avarice raging while innocence hides or dies wherever it shows its face. Just look at the face of Emil Bove and tell me you do not see the face of a Gestapo stormtrooper, with dead eyes intent on exerting, at long last, the retribution he has been seeking to inflict on the world, any world. Look at the bedraggled and unshaven face of Jeffrey Epstein with all the secrets and deranged lust that lurks in what passed for a blackened heart that coaxed the nastiness out of so many rich and powerful like Trump himself. Look at Steven Miller’s face and tell me. He doesn’t look like a modern day Heinrich Himmler. Then look at Roberto Benigni’s face. It doesn’t take a genius to see the difference. Goodness and light comes through just like evil and darkness. It is a classic juxtaposition that is as old as mankind.
We cannot escape evil and darkness sometimes, especially when it gets on a roll. And it is certainly on a roll in these United States right now. The warning signs abound and grow more stark every day. They scream to us that “These are the times that try men’s souls”, which is the famous opening line from Thomas Paine’s pamphlet “The Crisis,” written in December 1776 during one of the darkest periods of the American Revolution. Paine wrote this while traveling with George Washington’s Continental Army as they retreated across New Jersey after suffering defeats in New York. The colonial cause seemed nearly hopeless – the army was demoralized, enlistments were expiring, and many colonists were losing faith in the revolution. Washington was so moved by Paine’s words that he ordered the pamphlet read aloud to his troops before they crossed the Delaware River for the surprise attack on Trenton. The essay helped rally American spirits during this critical moment. The phrase has since become a powerful way to describe any period of severe testing or hardship that reveals people’s true character. It captures the idea that difficult times separate those with genuine commitment from those who only support a cause when it’s easy or popular. Paine’s words remind us that adversity, while painful, can also be clarifying – showing us what and who we can truly count on.
I’m sure that while Washington crossed the Delaware to engage the evil of his time, there was a Roberto Benigni figure hunkering down in Trenton, protecting his child until the storm blew over.