Yesterday was a long day.  I drove my girls to summer camp, and it took about an hour and forty five minutes to get there.  The way back home took four hours and ten minutes.  On the way to the girls’ summer camp, I noticed that traffic was stop and go for over 25 miles going the other way.  I had advance knowledge of what I was getting myself into, so I strategically placed food and water and a cell phone within my reach.  That was the first time I’ve texted from behind the wheel, which is what you do when your vehicle isn’t moving for over 5 minutes and the cars in front of you have already done the slow sauntering Chinese firedrill and gotten a couple items from out of their trunk.

Meanwhile, a bunch of friends are commenting on the six planets that went retrograde, and how their lives have been impacted by the kinds of obstacles you’d expect.  These things happen.  Astrology is a funny thing.  People who only see their own lives are understandably underwhelmed.  Nurses in ERs, on the other hand, have long since stopped thinking it strange when a string of October birthdays present to the ER with head or heart injuries in one night.  Proper risk management strategies should have you acting as if the planets actually do affect your life, so that you can prepare for it.

What would you do if your car broke down?  What would you do if your car ran out of gas while parked on the interstate highway?  What would you do if your child got sick?  What would you do if you got sick?  Everybody gets sick eventually.  One can only hope that it was a nasty cold instead of a heart attack or cancer.  Yet cancer happens to somewhere between one third and one half of all people, so you need to be prepared for it.  Venus goes retrograde too, and one half of all marriages end in divorce, so you need to be prepared for that too.  Everybody experiences struggles in their relationships.  How do you give your spouse or other significant relationships space to work through their difficulties?

There are also bigger risks at play.  What if your country launches a nuclear missile at another one?  What would you do?  What is the nearest fallout shelter, even if it is the local bank vault?  What if climate change is accelerates a lot, and the sea levels rise 100 feet, and the major coastal cities get flooded?  Do you still live in a place which is lower than 100 feet in elevation?  Do you still live in a place where too much of the critical infrastructure is located lower than 100 feet in elevation even if you live at 500 feet above sea level?  What about major Earthquakes or Tsunamis or Volcanoes?  What’s your plan?  Yes, I have thought through all of these and have made plans.

What do you do if there’s a major epidemic of communicable illness?  I had friends who were exposed to SARS, and quarantined in their house for a week or two.  They were prepared for it, and had enough supplies.  What do you do if there’s a major stock market crash?  What do you do if there’s a major stock market moon shot while the housing prices all get cut in half and mortgage rates triple?  What do you do if the major breadwinner in your family gets disabled and loses their job and their health insurance?  What do you do if YOU get disabled, if your driver’s license gets taken away wrongly, if you get sued for something you didn’t do, if your identity gets stolen?

What do you do if you get really sad or scared?  Everybody gets sad or scared in their lives.  Why would you be any different?  How do you draw purpose and meaning from the pain that presents itself to you, from the risks you succumb to?  Everybody loses their identity at some point in their life, forgetting the very essence of who they’ve chosen to be.  Are you going to remember what it was, or maybe forge a new one made out of stronger yet more flexible stuff?  Being prepared for what life will inevitably throw at you makes it less shocking when it inevitably happens.