What Happens When You Depend on Other People….

An Essay on Self-Sufficiency

Watching the news tonight, I got a bad case of deja vu’.  Watching people of various ethnicities in a moonscape of urban disaster, ranting at public officials because their lights were not on, they have no gas for their cars, they need food, water, medicine, etc. In a nutshell, their life has been turned upside down so somebody must pay!  When I heard this, at the same time in my mind, I heard my Grandmother’s famous saying in my head: “If you are going to depend on other people to be Happy, you are going to be let down.”

What is really depressing about this situation to me is we ALL (as AMERICANS) had the opportunity to learn this lesson 8 years ago when Katrina hit….Did we learn from that bloody lesson? Did we forget the agony suffered by those that depended on the Government (local, state or Federal) for their well-being? for their very lives? If we did, why then are we watching a virtual repeat Live on T.V??

A good friend of mine from South Africa recently commented:

“Americans tend to suffer from chronic Social Amnesia, they so easily forget the lessons they need to remember to SURVIVE and in doing so thus FIX the social ill of NOT being SELF-SUFFICIENT”.

That is the first time I had ever heard NON SELF-SUFFICIENCY described as a “SOCIAL ILL” But when you think about it, when the majority of the population of this country depend on some form of Government entity for their food, housing, electricity, etc.. You have a SERIOUS SOCIAL PROBLEM, because when disaster strikes suddenly you have a city full of people who do not know how to survive…(turn on the news for a real-time demo). I think the real tragedy though is FORGETTING how this same episode 8 years played out in another American city…social amnesia personified?

Now I could be cold-blooded here and say this is where “Survival of the Fittest” takes over and most of these people I just mentioned end up feeding the buzzards (and the fish), thus freeing up the resources for the people who have the gene pool to survive and thus flourish and produce “little survivors” but I won’t, although history shows us that how things eventually turn out if you choose not to adapt (Adapt or Die).

You see, Americans like to put the bad times behind us; the challenging times, the times that really tried us, well, those become a faded memory. We like to remember the good times, the happy times; the times that made us smile…The problem with that thinking is you never get around to your REAL PROBLEM. Yeah, the easy path is to blame our Government and try to fix all their issues (Good luck with that BTW!) but the HARD path (not readily taken by most) is to fix OURSELVES. How about let’s stop resembling little baby birds with our mouths wide open waiting for the next hard-fought meal and start resembling wolves going out there and fighting for what’s ours? Is that not the spirit that built this country? Is that not the mentality of Pioneers?

I know, I know, Self-Sufficiency is never a popular subject simply because it involves WORK. Not to be the prankster who put the surprise in the punch bowl, but Despite what people think, human beings by their nature are lazy. They would rather like the hyena, steal somebody’s hard work (the lion’s kill) than go out and do it themselves.

As a Civilian Operator, you have to choose the less traveled road of self-sufficiency; yeah it’s lonely on this road, but the quality of the company of people you find walking with you is OUTSTANDING! Learning and Implementing the skills from those who have gone before and sharing that information is how we become who we need to be. Always challenging the status quo, always pushing forward.

“To Strive, To Seek, to Find, and NEVER to YIELD.”- from Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Stay Dangerous!