How do you prepare for the Great Crisis?

On April 9 1865, Wilmer McLean, a merchant living in central Virginia, was surprised to see a Confederate solider, Colonel Charles Marshall riding towards him.  McLean lived in a very small crossroads called Appomattox and the Civil War had come to him.  Colonel Marshall asked McLean if he knew where General Robert E Lee could meet with Union General U. S. Grant.  Reluctantly, McLean offered his own house.  A few hours later, the surrender of Lee’s army to Grant was complete and, for all intents and purposes, the Civil War was over.

 

That McLean was the local citizen whose house was used is amazing.  Four years earlier, the war’s first major battle had occurred near Manassas, Virginia.  At that battle, McLean’s lived near Bull Run creek, in the midst of what would become the battlefield; his house was thus used in 1861 as a headquarters for the Confederate army.  Though a supporter of the cause of secession, as the war continued in that region of northern Virginia for another year, including another major battle in Manassas in the summer of 1862, McLean decided that he was going to move his family.  So, in 1863, he moved to what he assumed was the quiet of central Virginia.  Two years later, the Colonel came riding over the hill and in a whirlwind of events, the major participants of the war, Lee and Grant, were sitting in his living room.  The crisis had found him despite his best efforts to escape and hide.

Is there anything you can do about everything I have written to you?

 

Those words are from the fifteenth installment (find the earlier sections here) about my recent book, one that I am very excited about—Tracking the Storm.  An excerpt from Chapter 15 follows below.  You can download a pdf  if you enjoy reading on your computer or also purchase a printed copy of the book.

 

 

I didn’t write this book to try now to sell you on some concept of avoiding the crisis.  I certainly am not going to ask you to sign up for some annual newsletter to show you how to invest in gold or special garden seeds.  I have no idea what the crisis will be, or when it will even hit.  Sitting here typing in 2011, it sure feels like it could come now, breaking open like a flood.  Yet, even after the 1770 Boston Massacre, there were 3 silent years between that event (one of the last on the “road to crisis”) and the Tea Act that sparked the final events.  We cannot predict the years or dates of events to come.  I am not going to tell you now to stock up on some supposedly precious item.  What I am telling you though is that the event is coming.  So, what can you do?

 

The first step you have already taken, at least a little.  That is to know your history and the history of our country.  By almost any account, the United States is one of the most successful countries in world history.  Clearly, it remains an exceptional place to live if we give any credence to the millions of immigrants who continue to move here.  What that tells us is that there is a set of values, a set of concepts that created our country and still attracts people today.  Logically, if there is such a set, we need to know them and protect them.

 

President Obama referred to some of our old national values— “hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism”—during his Inaugural Address in 2008.    As he implied, we need to return to those values.  Yet, how can anyone return to values if they have no idea the history of those values?

 

Secondly, each person must really examine his or her own personal values.  What, exactly, do you believe in?  Who are you?  What do you stand for?  When life is easy, few care about what you believe in, and perhaps in some respects, it doesn’t matter.  When, however, life is fragile and the world is changing around you, you had better know what you really believe in.  What would you die for?  Where is your integrity and what lines won’t you cross?  I obviously can’t tell you what to believe in; as a Christian, I am confident in my faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of the one true God.  He guides my life and provides instruction about what values I should hold.  Yet, the internal values are not merely spiritual thoughts, but related to action during life.  If the financial issue becomes more extreme, perhaps becoming “THE” crisis, we may find ourselves living in a prolonged state of being unable to buy anything.  If your values reflect simple living, you will be better prepared to confront that situation.  Moreover, as you connect to our historic American values, particularly the values cherished by your local community, you will be positioned as a “team player.”  Any others who appear completely detached from the important historic values of the community may be seen as a threat.  You must be ready to know exactly what you are living for, and for what you are willing to sacrifice.

 

Thirdly, understand that a crisis is typically the time when you MUST sacrifice.  Perhaps you will lose the financial ability to eat out every week.  Maybe you’ll have to give up cable/satellite TV.  Perhaps, that type of entertainment will simply vanish in some crisis relative to space or communication.  You might find far less at the grocery store, especially if the crisis is related to environmental concerns like water issues or the renewed grain stem rust disaster.  Remember, for five years, citizens of the Confederate States of America used paper money that became worthless by 1865.  There is no promise that our concept of money or wealth will survive what we are facing; preparing to confront sacrifice relative to finances will be critical to your success if that happens.  We may find that most of our expected societal services like easy access to hospitals, 911 working when we want it, food stamps, public bus transportation could vanish.   Paying a price to make it through a crisis will be normal and perhaps far extended past what any of us are used to.

 

Lastly, I urge you to invest in a real community of friends to sustain you.  In recent years, there has been a wealth of writing about the loss of community here in the USA.  Robert Putnam’s excellent book, Bowling Alone chronicles this loss well.  I have spoken at length about this in my seminars given across the country; our country was founded on the concept of community.  From Jamestown to Oregon Trail, success of the country was predicated on working together, yet for the first time in our national history, this value has been lost.  Community can be defined as a group of people working together, over time, to build an atmosphere of respect, of service to others and of shared accomplishments and actions.  It must be cultivated and protected; it doesn’t just happen.  Regardless of what kind of crisis does hit, you will need others to get through.

 

This includes building close connections with those you can trust and forging relationships with well-placed people.  Or, to say it another way, if you head into the Crisis with few friends, or worse, several enemies (say in your neighborhood or at your work), it will be harder for you to survive easily.  Think about a neighborhood after a natural disaster where societal support services can’t reach you—will you have the community resources to hold together, cherishing the social contract, watching each other’s property in a cohesive manner to help all survive protected?  Or, do you not even know your neighbors?  If there was a crisis, would anyone come to help you?

 

Last thought—if there is one other thing to prepare for it is this; prepare to possibly be on the losing side of the event.  Remember as I have shown you, the country was not fully united during any of our crises.  Even during World War 2 and the Depression, there were differing opinions about what to do next; some people found their views to be on the losing side (ask the folks living in East Tennessee when the Federal Government simply took their land, dammed the Tennessee River and created vast lakes where previously were farms).  At the end of the day, history shows us that you may discover your world completely altered; your way of thinking no longer accepted.  Even if you just move away (as many Loyalists did after the Revolution), the world to where you move will not be the same.  Life will be different.  Get ready for it mentally before it possibly becomes a reality at some future date.