This morning I added this paragraph to my last post, because I wasn’t sure the point about leadership I was trying to make was clear:
“Each person trying hard to prepare, help others, and sharing useful preparedness information can be a leader too. We all can step forward and try to help and guide those who have no idea how to go about working on emergency preparedness.”
I’m very much a contrarian, not good at “going along to get along’ and I can ruffle people’s feathers a lot, so I’m often left thinking, later, like with my after-rant post the other day, “Perhaps, I could have toned that down or chosen my words better or explained what I meant better.” However there are dozens upon dozens of people, especially online who are great at public speaking, great at putting together interesting and useful how-to videos and conveying information and yes, there are people all over America, in every community like this. Each of those people could choose to be a leader (many already are doing just that) in helping maintain calm, order and help others learn how to be better prepared and learn important skills. These people could be leaders and small beacons of hope, within their own family, community and even online as this economic and food crisis worsens.
The truth though is everyone at some point has a leadership role in life, like every parent has a duty to teach, guide and lead within their family. When I mention my late husband, I’m not trying to make him sound perfect, only trying to share useful leadership skills he taught me, even though I prefer not to be the leader in a group. In fact, I have always preferred to work in small groups with people committed to the same mission or goal that I am committed to. I like working with like-minded people who get stuff done and I get very frustrated and impatient with lazy people on the team I’m on, people who brag constantly and produce little, or the person who creates unnecessary drama and conflict within the group. I hate “drama” and therefore, this is the truth, I have always preferred to work in a group of men rather than in groups of women (boy, that’s a controversial thing to say, but that’s how I feel). That said, nowadays with all the gender stuff that’s gone on for years, I’ve noticed so many young men who are into being drama queens too and plenty of young women, who have to wear the pants in their family, because they’re raising kids alone or have some deadbeat man in their life, so there is that.
Let’s just leave it at, I prefer to set a goal and then focus on getting it done. We can all work towards being more productive and more proactive in our lives, rather than waiting for someone else to do for us. All that “the sky is falling” drama that spreads like wildfire on social media isn’t going to help anyone – we need more people who can stay calm, offer practical and actionable information, and who can spread a bit of hope.
There’s lots of bad news and more bad things happening than I can keep track of with this growing global economic and food crisis and that’s the important thing to remember – it is global. No country can escape all the fall-out from these crises, even America. There’s also fall-out from the war in Ukraine and climate issues, like drought affecting this crisis. Of course, I’d argue President Biden’s actions in regards to fossil fuel are making things much worse, but truly there is no magic bullet – everyone in the world is going to be impacted. Wasting a lot of energy every day looking for a scapegoat for all the serious problems is a waste of time. Each of us can look around our homes or in the mirror and see a whole lot of areas for improvement. I like to put my energy toward changing the things I can control.
People already working on homesteading, emergency preparedness and frugal-living are already taking big steps toward being more self-reliant and they’ve got important lessons they’ve learned that they can share with others. There will be disagreements about which way to do this or that is the best way, but at this point taking any steps toward growing some of your own food, learning more skills, working on stocking up food and emergency supplies, building some community spirit is better than doing nothing.
Most of all we should all live in today, not in fear of some future catastrophes. The little daily joys are what life’s all about.
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