I am sitting in my apartment, writing my thesis. It is what I have been doing for the past few months.
Suddenly, my phone starts beeping with an unmistakable sound of an emergency alert, warning about a possible drone detected near the Lithuanian border.
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I have never liked that sound and its intrusive, impossible to ignore, demanding attention regardless of what I am doing. For a brief moment, I think: A real drone, you mean? That is interesting. The alert instructs everyone to remain calm and await further instructions. I try to return to my thesis but cannot concentrate. Instead, I walk to the window and look outside. The street is unchanged. People continue their routines. Nothing appears different. I sit back down and begin reading what I have written.
Then another emergency alert arrives. This time, the message informs that the danger level has been raised and the drone is now in Lithuanian airspace. It advises everyone to seek shelter in the nearest safe location.
For a moment, I simply stare at the screen, unsure what to do.
Then my body seems to know before my mind does. I begin packing my emergency backpack, just as I had done countless times while working in Afghanistan or Yemen. Calmly and methodically, I gather water, documents, medication, my glasses and, for reasons I could not fully explain at the time, a banana.
While many residents head for designated shelters or gather in underground parking garages, I finish packing and, following official guidance, go to the only windowless room in my apartment: the bathroom. Thinking about it later, I understand that seeking shelter in my bathroom instead of going to a designated shelter or underground parking felt like a way of complying with safety measures while avoiding a fuller acknowledgment of the situation and in this way preserving, at least temporarily, my sense of a safe and familiar world.
For years, I had worked in places where air raid sirens and shelters were part of daily life. I had taken cover at least a couple of times and I have gone through numerous trainings and drills modelling all possible danger and risk scenarios. Yet, in my mind, I had always assigned those experiences as belonging to another reality – a world that was dangerous, unstable and fundamentally separate from the one I would eventually return to. Europe and Lithuania represented the “safe world”.
That afternoon in Vilnius, this distinction collapsed. That afternoon in Vilnius, I was proved once again that certainty is an illusion.
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Psychologically, crises confront us with a profound sense of powerlessness or vulnerability. Faced with events we cannot influence, many of us instinctively seek control wherever we can find it. Sometimes that search becomes hypervigilance or overplanning. For me, packing the backpack was exactly that: an attempt to control what remained within my reach.
Reflecting on my years as a humanitarian aid worker, I realise that what sustained me during periods of danger was never certainty. Instead, it was three simple things: play, routine and rituals that create togetherness.
The banana in my emergency backpack was an act of play. It was unnecessary and slightly ridiculous. I knew, perhaps unconsciously, that one day I would tell someone about it and laugh. I remember another night, years earlier during my work in Palestine, when clashes erupted near my home. My flatmate woke me up in the middle of the night and pulled me into the windowless corridor while we could hear gunfire outside. After sitting there for what felt like an eternity, I quietly crawled into the kitchen and returned carrying bananas for everyone. For me, it was a small act of creating a moment of laughter in the middle of fear.
Routine is another important element. At a recent conference, I listened to a Ukrainian psychotherapist describe how, after the full-scale invasion began, she made a point of turning on her washing machine every morning. The act itself was ordinary, but it became an anchor or a reminder that life continued despite the uncertainty surrounding her.
I recognised the same pattern in my own experiences. Last summer, while working in Iraq, escalating exchanges of fire between Israel and Iran led to the closure of airspace over Iraq, leaving me stranded there. I could not control when I would leave as all flights were cancelled indefinitely, but I could decide to continue my morning walks in a park and my evening climbing sessions. Keeping those routines gave structure to days that otherwise felt suspended. They reminded me that I could still shape the rhythm of my own day.
And then there are rituals that remind us we are not alone. During the COVID-19 pandemic, communities in many countries stepped onto balconies to applaud healthcare workers. In Ukraine, every morning begins with a nationwide moment of silence to honour those who have died in the war. Such rituals reaffirm that we have each other, even when the future feels uncertain.
Perhaps that is the paradox of crises. They expose how little control we truly have while simultaneously revealing the many ways we can still choose how to respond. We cannot always prevent uncertainty. We cannot guarantee that the worlds we consider safe will remain so. But we can keep (or at least try to) our routines, create moments of play and participate in rituals that connect us with others. In doing so, we preserve our resilience.