Preparations

The rains came and went - more to come. The temperature is 52 degrees fahrenheit. Today is. Sunday.

It seems that all of life is about preparations. Making plans, assessing plans, discovering the plans have to change. You can feel a sense of security in having made sure that you are prepared for the myriad of things that life will require of you. And of course, in between all of the movement toward readiness, things change and that means all your efforts at being prepared may fall short.

It is like having the actual experience of living into the phrase, "There is no there, there." It is the process, not the conclusion.

That is, the core of preparation is in doing that which one anticipates will be needed at some point in the future. It is connecting now to what your imagination envisions of the future. Whether it is for a trip, an important meeting or encounter, or a disaster that may hit and leave you without an ability to communicate with the rest of the world, eat, or warm yourself. We make preparations for all sorts of anticipated conditions and events.

Some of us are the types who want a plan for anything and everything. We spend much of our lives, thinking about or imagining the future. We find all kinds of tools to help us become better prepared. We want to be sure there will be a power source, enough food to last for a week in the event that roads and emergency response runs short. We use lists and find ways to ensure that our activity directed at being prepared covers all bases.

It is a very central notion, "Be prepared." The Girl Scouts of America have this as one of their mottos and one might ask, "For what?" The answer must boil down to, "For all the events you will face in life, both the good ones as well as the not-so-good ones!" One learns survival skills and while the skills sets have evolved over the years, the central driving energy remains the same - in essence, learn how to accord to the conditions you face, whenever those conditions may appear.

Making preparations is important. It is also important to accept that there are some situations for which no amount of preparation will be enough. To tuck this fact somewhere into the back of your mind may be very valuable because when the unexpected, additional situation presents itself - you will be "better" prepared.

We do the best we can in life, we go through phases of acquiring the knowledge, then turning knowledge into understanding and intelligence. Ultimately, we realize that the most important thing is not the accuracy in being able to anticipate what may happen, but in how we go about preparing ourselves for what life brings.

It is a great exercise in self-awareness. To observe ourselves: What do we anticipate will be the need? How do we prioritize what we believe is necessary to be prepared? Who do we think about as we go about getting ready? All that preparation offers us a process for seeing who we are from a different viewpoint.

Then, things unfold and it is anyone's guess what will happen next.