Stranic

When my sister Lucia and I were kids, we loved a computer game called “Pirates!”

In this game, you played a pirate captain.

You raided cities and ships, traded goods, and dug for gold.

It wasn’t just you in the game, though.

It was all your men, too.

Your crew.

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Throughout the game, “Pirates!” told you your crew’s morale.

In battle, the best morale level was wild.

Second-best was strong.

After that was:

• firm

• angry

• shaken

Last—worst—was panic.

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Lucia and I were aggressive “Pirates!” players.

If you were a wealthy enemy city, the Spanish treasure fleet, or a rival pirate, we attacked you.

No matter the odds against us, our crew’s morale generally started strong.

Then, if we were overmatched, it sank.

Strong to firm.

Firm to angry.

Angry to shaken.

Shaken to panic.

But that’s not what showed up on screen.

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Our version of “Pirates!” had a bug.

When our crew’s morale dropped, it told us the new level without erasing the starting point.

At the very end of a losing battle, then, strong became stranic.

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It’s been decades since Lucia and I played “Pirates!” together.

Yet we still say “stranic” to each other all the time.

Stranic is a great term.

It’s part palimpsest, part second law of thermodynamics.

Not just a state of panic.

The particular state of panic one experiences mere moments after feeling confident and strong.

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Once you incorporate stranic into how you see the world, you recognize it everywhere.

The hare at the end of “The Tortoise and the Hare.”

Napoleon in Moscow in the winter of 1812.

Sports and politics.

Business and dating.

I feel stranic when I get to the supermarket checkout and find out I forgot my wallet.

When I hit send on an important email and realize I called the recipient the wrong name.

When I bend over to tie my shoes, trip, and turn my ankle.

When I reach through narrow fence slats to retrieve a bouncy ball and my entire arm gets stuck.

Shame is emotional stranic.

Outrage is stranic applied to standards and expectations.

There’s sexual stranic, financial stranic, ice-cream-licking stranic, and feline stranic.

A.k.a. cat videos.

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I learned a lot from playing “Pirates!”

There’s the potential for panic within any strength.

But also remnant strength inside me each time I panic.

Not just me, though.

Everybody else, too.

Because that’s life’s most persistent illusion, isn’t it?

We think we’re alone.

But billions of other people are experiencing almost exactly the same feelings.

We think we’re the captain.

We’re really the crew.