Facts of Life & Preparedness

We humans tend to get easily side-tracked from what we ‘plan’ to do.  There are many factors that contribute to this from mass marketing and advertising, to rationalizing, just plain old excuse making and ‘life’ in general.  Yet one factor that often affects how well we stick to any plan is the most basic and simple of them all – We forget about what a human body needs to survive. Or more simply we ignore the vary basics that a human body needs, the bottom line.  Even ‘experts’ like Maslow, have identified this simple fact of life.

What happens to too many of us when we ask ourselves this basic question is we get all hung up on the touchy-feely side of things that mostly concern our mental and spiritual health or our ‘feel good’ mentality. 

Yes, these things are important and in my book, very important!  However the bottom line is that without our human body we are dead, pure and simple and if we are dead we cannot even begin to address these other factors, yet alone the more frivolous wants and desires.

•    Without oxygen rich air to breath we perish in about 4 minutes.
•    Without water to hydrate our bodies we expire in about 4 days.
•    Without nutritional food we die in about 4 weeks.
•    Without protection from the elements we can die between hours, to up to 4 weeks.

So any good preparedness plan will need to put the bulk of our time, energy and monies towards these four needs above addressing anything else.  The next bulk of time, energy and monies should be put to our psychological and spiritual needs.  Lastly, if at all, we go after our wants and desires.

Now many people will stick Medical and Dental needs immediately after our physical needs and then go on to the psychological and spiritual needs.  Whatever meets YOUR specific overall requirements on this subject should be your rule of thumb.  Nothing is set in stone here.

Funny, but this simple prioritizing rule is fantastic for just about all our other aspects of life, preparedness or not.  After all we are not some government that can just print the monies we need and grab laborers off the street to do the work, nor do we have some magic wand to create more than 24 hours in a day.  We only have ourselves, our families and maybe a few close neighbors and friends – and you can bet your last dollar that most of them will not act as a bank or laborer for us!

So how exactly does this apply to preparedness? 

Read on to find out!

Above all remember that life contains all kinds of tangible and un-tangible aspects, some are necessary, most are not and all require a thought process that identifies and prioritizes them.

TNT

"Emergency preparedness is a team sport.“
Eric Whitaker