Contentment: An Overlooked Skill

“We are not rich by what we possess, but by what we can do without.” – Immanuel Kant

I believe in preparedness, whether it’s for a short-term emergency, potential unemployment, or the end of the world. For people like me, knowledge is sacred. It’s not enough simply to store food and supplies. In an emergency, you will need particular knowledge and skills to survive and come out and top.

Contentment – which isn’t often viewed as a skill – is commonly overlooked by the prepper community. The ability to be content when your life changes is a mental skill that does not come easy for most of us. Here are a few examples:

• Would you be miserable or thankful if you had to eat “road kill” because you ran out of canned food?
• Would you complain about the lack of air conditioning or be thankful for the shade provided by a tree?
• Would you bemoan the lack of Internet and TV or find new hobbies?

“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” – Socrates

I refer to contentment as a skill because it can be learned. Those who fail to learn this skill will be miserable when disaster strikes. Discontentment leads to many of society’s biggest problems including theft, suicide, depression, and murder. You can see signs of discontentment in every aspect of today’s society, even when it comes to people who “have it all.”

Just think what an apocalypse would be like for those people.

Americans are spoiled. Many of us have not experienced true hardship or hunger. Will you be ready when your comfortable way of life changes forever? Will you be able to be content and thankful for what you do have? In the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

“For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain.”