Sooner or later, a crisis is going to happen.
If we've learned nothing else from the events of 2020, it's that a crisis will show up when you least expect it. Even if you plan for something, you can find yourself in a circumstance where things get out of control and the thing you thought you were dealing with ends up being a completely different thing. When you're in a situation like that, you don't know what to do or how to react. For most people, the obvious thing to do is to panic. To simply do whatever you think is right or at the very least what other people are doing. After all, they wouldn't be doing what they're doing if they didn't think it was the right thing... right? Plus at least doing something is better than doing nothing. If you do nothing and things get much worse, everything can spiral out of control on a scale you can't even imagine.
Yet it's rare that panic gives you any kind of positive outcome. Just doing something seems like a good idea but if it's the wrong thing, you might hurt more people than you help. Which can be an even more terrible situation to be in. So panic is a bad idea, but what's the right idea? In order to figure that out, you have to be able to think properly. Consider all the options in front of you and maybe look into ideas that might seem bad on the surface but could be better in the long run. Doing that means that panic is a bad call. Acting first doesn't always mean acting best. However, other people are still going to think that panicking is a good idea. You have to be willing to deal with that. Be the eye in the centre of the storm. The calm place from which the right ideas can be worked out.
This isn't going to make you very well liked. People are going to think that you're downplaying the situation. Or that you don't care about the potential for others to get hurt. You have to be okay with that. With the idea of being called names and attacked for being the one who isn't panicking. The person who doesn't just do things for the sake of doing something. However unpopular it might make you, it's better to be the calm and reasonable person in a crisis. Someone people can turn to when it all goes wrong.
Good Omens is very much about the problem of how to handle a crisis in the best way possible. Aziraphale, as played fantastically by Michael Sheen, and Crowley, played brilliantly by David Tennant, are the people at the centre of a crisis. More than one actually as it turns out. They have to deal with it in some way while pretty much everyone else panics around them. While the world is crashing down around them, they've figured out how to handle it. Between the two of them, they understand that panic isn't necessarily all that helpful. It's not going to get them what they want, which is a way out of the crisis. Even if at times Aziraphale can get out of control, he has Crowley to keep him in line. Remind him what they really need to do.
Which is deal with the situation they're in without crumbling themselves.
It's a fascinating process and you should do yourself the favour of exploring how to be functional in a crisis by checking out Good Omens as soon as you can.
Good Omens is available on Amazon.