Many of us are setting resolutions for the new year. Some call the resolutions goals; others call them themes. Regardless of the title, aspiring to better ways of living – and setting goals to achieve them – is a good thing.
For example, some people want to get healthy. For others, they want to build their bank account. For others still, they want to travel to some new and exotic place.
Just remember as you are setting your New Year’s resolutions, that there are “good” things in life, there are “better” things, and there are “best” things in life (a good discourse on this subject is Elder Dallin H. Oaks’ talk, “Good, Better, Best“).
As you set your personal goals for the new year, one goal that would be important to add is that of personal preparedness. Run some of these scenarios through your head:
ice storm
wind storm
tsunami
earthquake
job loss
community or civil unrest
drought
death of wage earner
None are pleasant, but they are happening or have happened in recent times to people — and not just a small number of people, but to thousands and thousands. The likelihood of one of these events happening in a community near you seems statistically sure. If not those above, then perhaps these:
fire
strike
flood
etc.
Such unpleasant things! Yet even in unpleasant things, good things can surface. One woman on television, while being interviewed after evacuation from Hurricane Katrina, said that for the first time in her life she’d turned to God. Another said that they’d begun seeing goodness in people due to the amount of service they’d received. So out of tragedy some good can arise.
So let’s discuss preparedness. For I think most of us at least imagine we’d like to be prepared for the bad things that might happen.
Walk over to your pantry. I’m serious. Do it now. Take a moment and look in your pantry. How many days could you go if the stores suddenly shut down around you? Three days? Two weeks? A month?
And a good question to ask is: how does one know how much food/supplies are enough for an unknown and unpredicted emergency?
The government in the United States used to recommend having a 72-hour kit. Now they’ve changed that to recommending a 2 WEEK kit. Anything is better than nothing. And many things stored are certainly better than a few things.
It’s actually easier than you might think to get started in putting up a few things for an emergency. The Mormon church (officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) has a website called Provident Living.org. Why not visit the site and learn a little bit of what you can do to prepare your family. That way if one of the unpleasant events mentioned above comes your way, you’ll be able to fare better and feel at greater peace – both before, during, and after!
