Friday, January 21, 2011

The Great Disconnect



As a thoroughly modern people, we have become disconnected.  Oh, we are connected to many things - cell phones, ipads, computers, ipods, xbox, television, any number of electronic devises - but we are disconnected from real life.

Life has always been full of hardship and joy, mourning and exaltation.  Living life required you to get your hands dirty.  When babies were born, the reality was that it was messy, bloody, painful and potential deadly.  Everyone who lived, had to deal with it.  There were no hospitals or doctors (or if there were, they were very limited) and most people greeted a birth as yet another part of life - with either a good outcome or bad.  People raised their own  children - they were connected.  They didn't have the option of hiring a nanny or sending their children to daycare.  They dealt with the day to day drudgery and blessings of caring for their offspring.  Men worked to care for and provide for their families.  Women lived lives of service to their husbands and children.  Parents cared for their children.  Children grew up and cared for their parents.  When life came to an end it was handled skillfully and lovingly by the same people that the deceased had walked with in life - their family.  The family was very connected, from birth, through every season of life and into the grave.  What a simple, perfect, beautiful way to live life.  Connected from the cradle to the grave through grief and glory, good times and bad.



And now, we are connected to our games.  Or our computers, or our phones.  We have exchanged the real world for the fantasy world.  We no longer get up close and personal with the realities of life.  We hire someone to help deliver our babies, on our schedule, and devoid of pain if at all possible.  We hire other people to raise our children.  We pay someone else to cook for our husbands and clean our homes.  We hire someone else to grow our food, butcher our meat and milk our cows.  Someone else provides our water and produces our electricity.  Someone else teaches our children.  We send our parents to nursing homes and expect someone else to care for them.  When someone we loves die, someone else washes them, dresses them and prepares them for the grave.  Someone else digs the hole and fills it in.  We are absent from life.  We are no longer engaged in actively living.  And we are missing out.

When we were connected to our family, we were connected to our neighbors and we were connected to our communities.  If someone was in need, we, as a family member, neighbor or community saw to that need.  There was resolution and accountability.  Taking care of each other was a matter of life and death.  It was not a perfect system.  People fell through the cracks.  Families were not perfect.  But it was personal.  It was connected.  It was real.



If the balloon goes up, economic disaster strikes or an EMP hits, our lives will get very real, very fast.  Once again, we will have to be an active participant in birth, in raising and teaching our children, in ministering to our husbands, in caring for our parents and in preparing and burying our loved ones.  We will have to get our hands dirty with growing our own food, butchering our own meat and milking our own cows.  We will have to provide our own water, clean our own houses and provide our own power (whatever that may be).  Are you ready?

It is time for us to reconnect with the real world.  We need to reap the blessings of knowing, loving and serving our families.  We need to take care of our children.  Love our husbands.  Care for our parents.  We need to take care of one another.  We need to relearn how to use our hands and our brains.  We need to reconnect with everything that truly matters.

15 comments:

  1. A beautiful and heartfelt post, and a great reminder. Thank you. For the past few years I've slowly been learning the basics: growing food, making clothing, cooking, preparing. This post was a wonderful reminder that I need to step it up a bit and work harder to achieve our goals of moving to a more rural area and homesteading, and living a life much closer to God.

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  2. Although I agree with you wholeheartedly, I am reminded of the old song from WWI and the line, "How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree [Paris]?" It's hard to put the genie back in the bottle.

    If a major nationwide disaster occurs, there will be millions who die just from lack of common sense and lack of connection to others. And, frankly, I'd have mixed emotions about it.

    How do we get back to being connected? Do we even still have the desire to do so? Maybe it's been bred out of many of us. There are some decaying American cities that I seriously doubt would be anything but a bloody battleground if their welfare checks stopped, much less in a SHTF scenario.

    I agree with you that we should get back to connectedness, but I'm not holding my breath. Far too many people have lived without it for far too long (for generations, in fact). For them, it's an alien concept.

    Anonymous Patriot
    USA

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  3. The trend I have noticed myself is with many individuals that were raised in the 1970's started this great disconnect we have in our society. Many of the children of the 1980's, 1990's and this past decade are even more disconnected, and exhibit a form of "arrogence" brought on by use of technology. I enjoy seeing thease individuals "humbled" with flat car tires, broken cells phones and malfunctioning laptops.

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  4. Simply and eloquently put. Amazing post. Right on the mark! Thanks for the reminder.

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  5. beautiful post, how true, I look forward to reading more.

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  6. You have a great web site here. I went through a very difficult time as the primary caretaker of both of my parents. I let them have it their way although it would have been less stressful to send them off to a impersonal institution to pass away. It was a sad time but I would not trade it for anything now. Being born and dying are the two most personal moments in life.

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  7. Beautiful post and very well said. In the recent snowstorms in the southeast, it was funny/sad to hear people talk about having cabin fever and what would they do with their kids (after only 2 days). Its terrible that people have given over their right & joys with their children and husbands for "convenience". The world will be a very different place if any of the Doomsday predictions come to pass, and folks should be somewhat prepared.

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  8. Such a very meaningful topic, Enola.

    The community spirit is alive and well in my town. Unfortunately for me, it is not the kind of community spirit I want to adopt. I am not interested in feeding the transients who come through town twice a year - once to plant the pot and then harvest it months later. Also, I don't want to embrace the concept of helping people by teaching them the ins and outs of the "system." Since I cannot afford to move, I must stay here and try to acquaint myself with people who think as I do. That is getting harder by the day as more and more Christian conservatives move out of California.

    On the other hand, my family has grown closer together and we would do anything for each other. Proving, once again, that blood is thicker than water.

    NoCal Gal

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  9. Lovely post, Enola, and so true. I wonder, are you familiar at all with the subject of home funerals? And, if so, would you consider doing a post on it?

    Birdy

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  10. Very well-written. And way too true.

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  11. Thank you for setting up such a great blog! I am a 41 yr old male who has been providing for my wife and 7 kids ages(11,9,7,5,3,2,and 6 wks). I have had the largest company of its kind for 6 years and it has dwindle to nothing last month. I am now renting and moved across the country last month. I saw this coming three years ago and spent all my time after kids went to bed teaching myself on the internet. First on silver, double my money when i sold it last year to get by. I hadn't handled a gun since dessert storm and Obama convinced my wife and I to stock up and train. I could see the handwriting on the wall so while the company was still making some money, every side job or cash job went to prepping. I also was invited to do some prison ministry 3 years ago and has been the most rewarding job ever given me by God except for family. God worked through me and gave me the heart to reach many in youth correctional and state penitentiary. I feel like Paul with 20-30 saved. My nightly reading has grown and became a serious prepper to the point of having many christians mock my lack of faith. While I have just begun looking for work I feel I can laugh at the days to come as there are two years food, enough tools to start a small company in ten different trades and enough friends with large retreats to set up shop and homestead. With the Holy Spirit working so powerfully in my life I questioned a couple of times if I should prep or not. Good texts like Matthew 26 and "think not of tommorrows food" made me think again untill I found your blog the other day on Survivalblog.com and read your article on Preparedness apologetics. I have never felt wrong about stewardship and saving for harder times. So as stated above I'll just go back to dating the canned food. read most of your articles in a couple of days and must tell you this is the best blog I've found and thank God for it. Love the pics and your men and maids. I will pray God bless you and we meet in heaven.

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  12. Thank you for posting this. I really enjoy your blog. I look forward to more posts in the future. You have hit the nail on the head with this one.

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  13. A truly wonderful post! Thank you again ... my friends and I often talk about what we will need to do IF something happens. And we are getting prepared, but so many aren't listening! I heard a phrase that fits the mentally of today so well: Normalcy Bias. It's when people refuse to face the fact that something could happen... after all - "it's never happened before, so it won't happen now." Rather scary. I am so glad there are people like you who truly care and are trying to get others to listen! Thank you..

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  14. What a lovely post :)

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  15. Just found a link to this, and glad I did. Thank you.
    Life is so much more beautiful, lived with our eyes open.

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