You Can’t Repair the Damage Ahead of Time.

man with chainsaw topping off a tree
But you can at least prepare. I thought of this idea today while I was listening to a story on the radio about Hurricane Matthew. The background audio was of chainsaws as workers tried to clear fallen trees from the roads. This same concept has also occurred to me when I’ve read about the run-up to a battle. The medics are in place, bandages and medicines in hand. The tents are set up. But . . . there’s no way to bind up the wounds ahead of time. There’s no way to extract the bullets before they’re shot.  All this has to wait until the battle has taken place. How awful it will be, though, if the preparations that can be done aren’t done.

So there are the ones in the path of the storm who stocked up on water, groceries, and toilet paper, who dug out the old camping stove and checked to make sure it had plenty of fuel, who put the plywood over the windows, planned an evacuation route, called out-of-state friends for possible lodging, and even sharpened the chainsaw. (Or maybe bought a chainsaw to begin with, although perhaps it’s not the best idea to use one for the first time on a big fallen tree.) And then there are people like me who figure, oh, it probably won’t hit our neighborhood. We tend to make a distinction between practical people and intellectual people, but in reality we can all aspire to be both.

So maybe I’d better quit writing this post (which had to be partially re-written because I didn’t save it) and get busy. My mother used to say, “Debi, you’re smart, but you don’t have any common sense.” I think she was right. It’s almost 5:00 on a Wednesday afternoon, and I have a boatload of preparations to do in advance for upcoming events. I can’t, for instance, just hope that our extra rehearsals next week will get me in enough shape to sing in the Cherry Creek Chorale‘s concert next weekend. (Have I mentioned this particular issue before? Oh, right.) We have huge projects looming at our house that I can’t just hope will magically get done. As my husband’s colleague used to say, “Hope is a poor planning tool.”

What can you do today to get ahead of an upcoming problem?