How do you view the subject of Prepping? Is it a fear that keeps you up at night worried about your children or family members? Do you look at prepping as an exciting hobby where you get to buy a lot of gear and gadgets that you have been wanting for years? Is this activity of Prepping, a kind of insurance policy that you have taken out on yourself – one with no paperwork to sign and no limits but your own determination on claiming it? Are the things that you do to prepare or become more self-sufficient done with a sense of foreboding and dread? Does your activity reinforce these fears each day as you look at the news and it becomes more clear just how screwed we all are? Is whatever hope you had long gone?
Since I have been prepping for my family I have taken in a ton of information. News from around the world and opinions from a lot of different voices have shaped my view of society toward a certain direction for a long time. As I have read, learned and experimented with various things that some might say mimicked a survival mentality; I have had lots of motivating factors that pushed me along. I will admit that some days, what motivates me is a sense of fear; an impending doom from the prospect of the outcome that awaits us all at the end of this journey we are on. There have been different urges that drove me toward learning a new skill or acquiring a piece of hardware that I could use to keep my family safe. Some of these fears are common, others might border on the absurd to some of you, but the root in all of them is some outcome I don’t want for myself or my family or anyone I know.
How Can You Pray for the Best?
I have talked in the past on the Prepper Journal blog about some people’s views when the subject of preparing for anything comes up. There is a certain percentage of people who will simply lie down and die if anything cataclysmic happens. Their words are similar to “if it gets so bad then what is the point in living anyway?” A few years ago, my wife and I had a conversation and I was talking in my most ominous voice about the threats we faced if we had a real grid-down situation. Going over the plans of what we would do didn’t give her hope, it depressed her. Imagining our world as we know it, ending forever, isn’t appealing – at least to anyone with half a brain. She viewed all of my efforts at preparing our household as pessimistic at best and at worst, having no faith in God and his plan for us. She thought that making plans for disaster showed how little faith and optimism I had and that was going against everything we knew and believed. I told her that I was looking at this in a completely different way.
What she viewed as my pessimism was correct in one sense, but not correct in the most important way I think. I am pessimistic about a lot of things. I am pessimistic about our nation’s government and their attitude towards the people who sent them to office to govern us wisely and fairly. I am pessimistic about our political representatives and the system that they have voted into being for themselves. I am pessimistic about our global economy, the people who run it and our chances for the type of life we dreamed of as kids. I am pessimistic about the fragility of our society and the veneer of civility that I think can so easily be stripped away with the right events. I am pessimistic about our short-term future and the path we seem to be on.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have faith.
All of the thoughts that drive my efforts at prepping have a goal and that is to keep my family safe or healthy. I do believe that I have been given a sense of urgency so that I can act now before anything bad happens. I don’t want to ever see the types of situations I fear might be possible in our future, but if we do, then I have taken some pretty substantial steps to do what I can now to make sure my family will be better off.
How to Prepare for the Worst?
Back to prepping – while I do hope and pray that nothing tragic ever happens, I think that it is foolish to believe that we will all lead a charmed existence forever. Things happen and they aren’t always good things. I know that life has a way of surprising you and while I am able, I am going to continue to work to prepare my family and help others get prepared for anything that life may throw at you. Do you have to believe in a conspiracy to prepare for bad weather? Do you have to believe an EMP will destroy our way of life to see the value in storing a months’ worth of food and water? Do you have to believe the government is coming for your guns to prepare for a layoff that could affect your family? Do you have to believe in mutant zombies to prepare a garden and start thinking about feeding your family if the grocery store clerks want to eat your face? Just kidding about the zombies…
I have said it before on this blog and I’ll say it again. You don’t have to fit into any mold to be a prepper. If you don’t have a tricked out battle rifle and camo pants hanging in your closet, it doesn’t matter. All you need is a desire to protect your family or yourself and the motivation to plan ahead. If you could ever foresee any event that could leave you compromised then you should be able to research what is needed to mitigate those circumstances and take steps now. That doesn’t mean you wish for bad things to happen, just that if they do you have played the odds as you see them. Or to put it as succinctly as the title
– Pray for the best but prepare for the worst.
Source: theprepperjournal.com