Watch disaster newscasts after yet another hurricane strikes the gulf coast and people’s homes are sideways and all their stuff is strewn across the street and they sit there bawling about having lost everything and I can’t help but feel that 1) You’re alive, be grateful, 2) All your stuff is ultimately worthless and 3) stop living as if life is stable. Life isn’t stable. We’re perched upon a great shifting surfboard and we’re lucky — blessed, to be sure — to be on our feet at all.
On an individual basis, I can sympathize that someone lost a loved one and maybe the surprise and potential shock of your life being flipped. What I can’t sympathize — specifically because I chose to try and remove that faux stability from my own life — is that all the crap they had that they called the substance of their lives is ripped from underneath their false hope.
I know I sound terribly cold and insensitive, but there is more than just a disdain for everyone else’s materialism. (To which, I should point out, I’m in no way impervious.) But then there’s the fact that people who live near the coastline act shocked when a terrible ocean storm rips apart their town. And don’t forget the Gulf Coasters and nearly anyone who lives in Florida.
“What do you mean, A HURRICANE’S COMING!? Didn’t it do that last year? Tell it that it’s not the right time! Tell it to come back in a few years when I’ve paid off my new roof!”
Why do we keep sympathizing? Furthermore, unless you’re absolutely poor AND disabled, how could you NOT leave? Why would you stay in a house when you knew a mother of a storm was coming your way?
I also raise the question: How often should Federal monies go to high disaster areas like Miami, northern North Carolina and the Gulf Coast? I mean, if this were the first or second time it had ever happened and people were still getting to know what living near the coast is like, I might understand. But there is nowhere in this country that we have not experienced just about every kind of weather those areas might ever experience!
People choose to stay! “Oh, I’ll be fine.”
Ever hear this one?
A terrible storm came into a town and local officials sent out an emergency warning that the riverbanks would soon overflow and flood the nearby homes. They ordered everyone in the town to evacuate immediately. A faithful Christian man heard the warning and decided to stay, saying to himself, “I will trust God and if I am in danger, then God will send a divine miracle to save me.” The neighbors came by his house and said to him, “We’re leaving and there is room for you in our car, please come with us!” But the man declined. “I have faith that God will save me.” As the man stood on his porch watching the water rise up the steps, a man in a canoe paddled by and called to him, “Hurry and come into my canoe, the waters are rising quickly!” But the man again said, “No thanks, God will save me.” The floodwaters rose higher pouring water into his living room and the man had to retreat to the second floor. A police motorboat came by and saw him at the window. “We will come up and rescue you!” they shouted. But the man refused, waving them off saying, “Use your time to save someone else! I have faith that God will save me!”
The flood waters rose higher and higher and the man had to climb up to his rooftop.
A helicopter spotted him and dropped a rope ladder. A rescue officer came down the ladder and pleaded with the man, “Grab my hand and I will pull you up!” But the man STILL refused, folding his arms tightly to his body. “No thank you! God will save me!”
Shortly after, the house broke up and the floodwaters swept the man away and he drowned.
When in Heaven, the man stood before God and asked, “I put all of my faith in You. Why didn’t You come and save me?”
And God said, “Son, I sent you a warning. I sent you a car. I sent you a canoe. I sent you a motorboat. I sent you a helicopter. What more were you looking for?”
At what point are we going to leave people to the consequences of choosing to live in an area likely to try and destroy their home and kill them?
“But people are hurting!”
And? People hurt every day, dying of sorrow, loneliness, broken hearts, broken souls, addictions and abuse. No one screams for them, and they die every day. Instead, we like to wait for things EASY to blame. Hey, it’s easier to blame Hurricane Sandy for the destruction of an economy than macroeconomic mismanagement by elected authorities.
In any event, people choose to live in such areas, and since every spot on Earth is subject to natural forces capable of ending you, then there is no way to escape the potential for disaster. As such, you should prepare accordingly, and start getting rid of all your fluff. Stop living on the copious and inane and start diming down to the important.
Stop expecting the government to prepare FOR you. You can offer as much tax money as you want, but the government can’t save you from yourself, contrary to popular belief, and if you live in such an area, start planning for the worst. Have a GOpack that you can grab and go at a moment’s notice. Hurricane coming? Tornado sirens? Flood warning? Know your escape route, grab your stuff, call your emergency contacts and places you can stay — HIT THE ROAD!
The government says bad stuff is coming? Sheesh, the government is usually trying to tell you it will solve your problems. If it says you need to get the hell out, ROLL! Get going! Don’t think you’re impervious, and then when you get steamrolled, scream for help as if you were some kind of enslaved victim. It’s your life! Prepare for the worst and get to living! You are no one else’s responsibility. Take that responsibility and start living it.
