So in the last post in this series I was talking about the idea that I create my own life.
That's simultaneously an incredibly exciting and incredibly daunting possibility. The idea that everything in my life is down to me, and that I can be responsible for it, is something that many people are just not prepared to buy into. Why? Because it is more comfortable to shift the responsibility elsewhere, and uncomfortable to take on the responsibility myself. But what does this actually look like in real life?
So this last week, despite having the intention of posting blogs here on Steemit, I ended up mainly not posting. I went from aiming at posting two blog posts per day and making comments on other people's posts, to making two posts in a week and a couple of comments on other people's posts. So what made that happen?
Well, in a nutshell, I did. I made that happen. I could have posted more, but I didn't.
And you see, this is where my way of thinking reluctantly departs from how a lot of other people choose to think about these things. I could hide behind the excuses that events in my life got in the way, and there was nothing that I could do about that. That seems pretty reasonable, right? An emergency in our household, that just happened to us and I didn't deliberately cause it to happen. The fact that it had a big effect on my week was just not my fault. It's totally understandable that while I was dealing with the emergency, I did not have time or energy to blog.
Right?
Wrong.
You see, the emergency happened for a reason. And if I walk back far enough into the network of reasons, there are actually multiple things that were directly affected by my actions.
The emergency initially appeared out of nowhere. I could pretend that I had no way of knowing that it would happen. But the truth is that we have lived here for long enough to know that once in every couple of years the weather here gets incredibly extreme and does something beyond what is normal. So I did know that this could happen: I just hoped that it would not.
The emergency had a specific cause. I could pretend that I had no way of knowing that this specific thing would happen. And indeed, it was a pretty incredible act of nature that caused this. But the truth is that I have seen this very act of nature several times now nearby, just not right at the house. I knew that it could happen: I just chose to hope that it would never happen at the house. And over time, this hope turned into a belief, without my noticing.
I didn't notice that my hope had turned into a belief. I was quite comfortable saying to myself that this would not, could not happen at the house. I had no foundation for saying this however. Only that I had not yet experienced this yet at the house. A bit like saying that we never have gotten burgled; hoping that we never will get burgled; and then somewhere down the line starting to believe that we never will get burgled, just because we haven't so far. You can see that this is a false logic.
So I had not been prepared for what eventually happened. I could have been, though. I could have done simple checks every so often around the property, checking for signs of certain things and taking action when I spotted them. I could have looked at things changing over time and intervened every so often to steer and maintain things.
The truth is that I chose not to check, and I chose not to intervene and maintain.
From a preparedness point of view, I was left wanting. The whole point of preparedness is to plan ahead for certain scenarios that might reasonably happen, and do things in advance to reduce either the chances of them happening, or the effects of them when they do.
Like having savings in the bank in case a big bill plops onto the doorstep (or these days, dings into the Inbox); like having extra food in the larder in case the shops are empty, shut, or we are too sick to go shopping; like having a backup water supply in case the main one freezes or fails; like having backup power supplies and backup sources of light in case the power grid is off in a storm or worse; like having a First Aid kit in the house in case somebody has an accident and needs to be fixed up; like not digging the ditches to keep them free for water to flow. Etc. Etc.
The truth is that I chose to be comfortable and to not check for things that would have signalled something bad was coming down the line. I settled for telling myself that it would never happen, so that I could spend my time on other things. And in doing this, I stopped looking for the signs. I went to sleep on my own watch, so to speak; and when the event came it took me by surprise and caused an emergency.
Now there are plenty of positives to still be had from all of this. It turns out that we reacted decisively and determinedly to fix the emergency when it arose. Luckily I became aware of the emergency early on, thanks to one of my dogs waking me up in the middle of the night and so I was up and about when it happened. And when it hit, I was able to react and wake up Judy, and together we fought for about five hours to get things under control, before spending the next couple of days hunting for the cause; taking steps to fix what we found; mending the damage that had been done; and putting plans into action to ensure that we reduced the chances of this ever happening again, or at least reducing the effect of it if it ever did.
It turns out that life is a series of opportunities to take action. And sadly, I mostly choose to go to sleep instead of waking up to do what needs to be done.
I create the situations in my life, by choosing to do or not to do all the things.
It follows then, that my life would be a whole lot better if I woke up and did a whole bunch of things that would make my life better :-)
I'm going to continue with this series #takingresponsibility to keep illustrating (for my own benefit mainly!) what it looks like when I do and do not take responsibility for the things in my life. Some of it is going to challenge both mine and your ideas about what a reasonable person could, would, and should include within the definition of taking responsibility. But that's all good, and if it gets me thinking and it gets you thinking about what needs to be done, then great.
One of the other things that I am spinning off out of this post series though is a series of posts directly about preparedness. Whereas #takingresponsibility will be mainly about mindset and challenging the mindset that leads to complacency and negligence in my life; the #survivalmargin series I am starting today will focus on actual literal steps that I can and will take (and anyone else is welcome to join in) in order to be better prepared for adverse conditions and situations that inevitable will come down the line and challenge my health, my wealth, my well-being, and even my survival.
