Are You Ready?

 

With Thanksgiving around the corner I am awash with gratefulness to have all of my needs met as well as a comfortable warm home with a snug bed to rest my body after a full and busy day.  I have enough clothing and a way to keep them clean, I have two older vehicles that are in good running order, paid for and get me from point A to point B and I am blessed with enough knowledge and skill to keep them that way.  I have savings and an emergency fund, a part time job that I love, pets to care for and provide me with endless amounts of love and laughter, a wonderful small circle of friends and family.  And yet…

 

In our current state of affairs I feel unsettled.  This past year has not been a good one for our country and it does not appear that it will be getting better any time soon.  In fact, I expect it will only continue to get worse.  Costs continue to climb, our way of life is challenged on a daily basis and the struggle for so many is real as they try to keep a roof over their heads and feed their families.  The future of affordable and available health care is tenuous at best.  And, I’m sorry if this offends you, but I’ve watched the president and his administration squander billions of taxpayer dollars while the Americans that have worked so hard for that money are struggling to meet their basic needs.

 

Sadly, I believe we are headed toward the very real possibility of an economic collapse and if so, if things do not change and soon, we will be experiencing a great depression.  When the stock market crashed in 1929 followed by the dust bowl that wiped out our agriculture from 1930 to 1936 it devastated our economy.  It was a slow road back and it left its mark on many Americans for generations to come.  My grandmother was raised during that time by her widowed mother and she never liked to talk about it because it was so incredibly hard, but I always knew by the amount of food she kept in her home and the things she kept and squirreled away for "just in case" that it affected her all her life.

 

The economic collapse or next great depression will be different.  We have the addition of technology, meant to improve our lives, but I fear that this technology will only make matters worse.  AI is moving fast and threatening to take over jobs.  Technology tracks our every move as if we all are criminals and need to be watched.  Why?  I do not know.  It has access to all of our personal information, our messages, photos and videos, our voting records, our assets and our money.  The list goes on and on.  It knows us better than we know ourselves.

While we cannot prepare for every eventuality we are preparing as best we can for the next phase in life and we are going into it expecting it to be hard.  We expect to face challenges we never thought we’d ever have to face in our lifetime.  We are battening down the hatches and heading into the future with caution and trepidation while remaining ever faithful that God will be with us every step of the way.  My gut and my intuition tell me to do things to protect and prepare for whatever is coming next.   I do believe democracy will stand tall and will not topple.  We will get through this, but it is quite possibly going to be a bit of a bumpy ride getting there.