Are You Ready?
"I've found that if I pray for God to move a mountain, I must be prepared to wake up next to a shovel." - unknown.
Constantly, we are trying to mitigate the damage that life might inflict upon us. Experience has shown that through preparedness, we can often weather the storm, if not in comfort, at least with the hope that we will survive. Entire lives are consumed in this pursuit. I am well acquainted with the processes of mitigation. I earned a bachelor's degree in Homeland Security and Emergency Management, where the whole focus was on identifying risks, mitigating risks, and handling the problems that come when those risks are realized.
When something unexpected happens, a certain degree of shock is a normal human response. However, people can become more resilient and better able to recognize reality quickly by preparing for possible future events. This preps the mind so that when an event begins, you can spring into action rather than freeze in disbelief. "The eye only sees what the mind is prepared to comprehend." - often attributed to Henri Bergson.
There are reasons this happens: the psychological shock of witnessing a bad accident can leave people unsure whether what they saw was real. Your brain expects things to be normal, so when something unexpected happens, it takes a while to catch up. Your feelings are then in charge of your thinking, and you may feel numb, detached, or confused. It is hard to prepare for this. "Even if you know what's coming, you're never prepared for how it feels." - unknown. The facts may be visible long before they become psychologically acceptable.
Normalcy bias is another reason people do not survive. This is particularly common during disasters and emergencies. People assume things will continue as they always have, even when evidence suggests otherwise, so they do not evacuate after a hurricane warning or leave a burning building when they hear the alarm because they figure it was just a drill.
People who have trained for crises– first responders, military personnel, emergency managers– often perform better in these situations because they have mentally rehearsed difficult scenarios beforehand. This is called stress inoculation (yes, just like a vaccine), and you can do it for yourself, for just about any scenario that you can imagine, even love. "If you wish to be a warrior, prepare to be broken. If you wish to be an explorer, prepare to get lost. If you wish to be a lover, prepare to be both." - Daniel Saint.
There are many people whose preparations have worked out, and they have reaped the benefit that comes from being ready. "Luck is when those who are prepared take advantage of the moment." - Raymond E. Feist, Rise of a Merchant Prince. Many other people find that despite careful preparation, events unfold differently than expected. Maybe they prepared for the wrong scenario, maybe a natural disaster came and destroyed everything, maybe they lost a person on whom their plan relied.
In your preparations, you may find that it is not possible to control the future, and your best laid plans may come to naught. If you spent thousands of dollars building up an extensive cache of survival items and a tornado comes out of nowhere and destroys it all down to the last can of tuna, was it all in vain? There are reasons why some people choose to live in the present and not plan for the future, and that is one of them. Since the future is fundamentally uncertain, trying to secure ourselves against every possible outcome becomes a source of anxiety rather than safety.
Jesus Christ asked his twelve apostles to do something that would make many preparedness-minded people uncomfortable—to leave behind their former lives and trust God with an uncertain future. No packing, no planning for tomorrow, no getting to work to make money so they can save for retirement. "Living by faith includes the call to something greater than cowardly self-preservation." - often attributed to J.R.R. Tolkien. There comes a point where the pursuit of safety can become a prison. "Cowardly self-preservation" is not merely staying alive. It is arranging one's entire life around avoiding loss, pain, uncertainty, or risk.
Christianity is not the only belief system that taught some form of this. There have been many others:
Buddhism- Prepare when preparation is useful, but do not cling to the belief that preparation can eliminate uncertainty.
Taoism- If you spend your life preparing for every possible storm, when do you actually sail?
Stoicism- A Stoic plans carefully but recognizes that the future ultimately belongs to fate.
Hinduism- You have a right to your actions, but not to the fruits of your actions. (In other words, do your duty, act wisely, prepare as best you can, and then release your claim on the outcome.)
Indigenous Traditions- While planning exists, there is often an acceptance that life unfolds through cycles beyond human control. The emphasis is less on conquering uncertainty and more on learning to live within it.
Across cultures and centuries, many traditions arrived at a similar conclusion: prepare when preparation is useful, but recognize that certainty is beyond human reach.
Preparation is useful because the future matters. Yet excessive preparation often rests on an unstated belief that "If I plan enough, I can guarantee the outcome." Alas, but we cannot. Does this mean that we should not try to secure a better future for ourselves? No, taking action can still qualify as time well spent. "Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out." - Vaclav Havel.
The best plan would be to not abandon preparing, but to also make certain that it is not the only focus of our lives. Perhaps it would be wise to ask yourself the following question every morning and then plan your day accordingly: "How much of my life am I willing to sacrifice today in an attempt to secure a future that may never arrive?" I hope that you choose well 😄.
Love and Hope,
Big Sky Baby