HOW RESILIENT IS YOUR HOUSEHOLD?
There’s nothing like reality to change a person’s mind, and the COVID-19 situation is a perfect case in point. For years my family considered me at least mildly over-diligent when it comes to preparing for a world that no longer functions as it usually does.
“A self-resilient population is a more secure population” was always my motto. Whenever I preached about this sort of thing around the dinner table there was often a rolling of teenage eyes.
It wasn’t until a new virus changed the world overnight that a couple of my kids told me they now understand my diligence. They value what they used to laugh at. Both the ones who mentioned their surprise are also frightened at how easily derailed the modern world is.
A virus that originated thousands of miles away has brought the whole world to its knees, and it should make you sit up and ask yourself an important question: How able are you to take care of yourself and your household when the world doesn’t provide the goods and services it used to? This is what personal resilience is all about and there are three features to it.
First, the best self reliance skills always requires that individuals prepare to take care of themselves as much as possible on their own. Government has a role here, certainly, but government can never provide the bulk of your care. It never could, so don’t fool yourself. There simply is no substitute for intentionally becoming more capable than you are now with the basics of survival for you and your family.
The second part of building a resilient lifestyle is hands-on skills. And while COVID-19 hasn’t yet made basic, hands-on skills necessary, don’t let the convenience and specialization of the modern world make you soft and unable to provide for yourself in unusual times.
Can you boost your own car? Can you change a flat tire? Do you know how to purify water without heat in the event that municipal supplies dry up or stop flowing? How would your diet look if supplies of supermarket food became unavailable for a week? A month? How able are you to meet your financial needs if your income stops for three months?
If nothing else, COVID-19 should teach us that massive disruption can appear in a flash. So far, as I write this in the third week of March, the self-resilience skills of the average person hasn’t yet become crucial. For most of us, the crisis is still hitting someone else, somewhere else. Electricity still works, food is still available, Canadians are still behaving nicely to each other.
But how would you and your family fare if electric power went down across North America for, say, two months? Sounds crazy? Perhaps, but only in the same way that the idea of a global disruption caused by a virus would have sounded to any of us a few months ago.
The third part of a resilient lifestyle involves preparing supplies and equipment ahead of time. Do you have a supply of fresh water stored? Do you have some method for heating your home at a basic level if the usual sources of energy stop working during winter? Do you have cans of gasoline stored so you can drive out of the city if gas stations close? Do you have some method of cooking if electricity and natural gas stop flowing?
COVID -19 proves, once again, that big trouble can appear quickly out of nowhere. And while there’s no way ordinary people like you and I can predict life’s big surprises, there’s plenty we can do to prepare for the time when all of a sudden things change in ways that no one thought possible.
Steve Maxwell believes in building a fence at the top of a cliff rather than parking an ambulance at the bottom. Join 30,000 people around the world who get his Saturday morning self reliance email newsletter each week.