Lee Cataluna: Adapting to things that should drive people mad

So, what you doing this weekend? Hanging out in traffic or hiding out at home to avoid traffic? Oh, going your friend’s house for barbecue tonight? Cool, cool. Better start out in the early afternoon so you get there on time. You know Oahu traffic, heh heh. Weekdays are bad, but weekends can be worse. No choices except to leave early, arrive late or stay home.

Humans have the amazing ability to adapt. Working around the things that can’t be changed is key to survival. The down side of this flexibility is that people can get really good at accepting things that are, at the core, unacceptable.

Hawaii residents are so accepting of really gnarly traffic and heavy road congestion. It’s the new normal.

Every single day, Hawaii commuters battle through traffic conditions that, in years past, would have seemed untenable. As it gets worse, people may notice and grumble, but then they jump in the car and join in the jam.

Windward residents who have had to plan their lives around the (very necessary) Pali tunnel repairs since the February rockfall quickly figured it out, worked around the major inconvenience, did what they had to do to get to work and school and tend to the necessities of daily life. It may have meant getting up extra early or leaving the house hours before an appointment, but families did what they needed to do. The clergy living at the St. Stephen Diocesan Center on the Pali were right in the thick of things, having to plan every trip to and from the property, but they said their prayers and went about their business. People were clever and creative, they adapted, they carried on.

But that’s a situation that’s going to get better. So many other daily traffic troubles are chronic.

Oahu commuters have gotten used to leaving hours early to get to the airport “just in case.” Doesn’t matter if the starting point is Windward or Leeward, East Honolulu or North Shore, if there’s a plane to catch, make allowances for traffic. Many people plan late-afternoon, early-evening activities in town so they can wait out the worst of pau hana traffic. Families who live way out in Mililani or Waialua or Kahuku and work in town or drive their kids to a private school in Honolulu every day, logging hours of their lives in the lanes, figure out creative ways to not let those lost hours eat away at their sanity. They adapt. More than that, they endure.

But the ability to adapt means not only do we survive, but the conditions under which we struggle are allowed to grow and intensify almost unchallenged. There never is a definitive moment of “Enough! No more!” because people keep figuring out new, evermore convoluted ways of getting through what should be a simple, hassle- free commute.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.