Friday, December 21, 2012

End of the World??

Today is 12-21-12 - the day that the Mayan calendar ends and people are speculating the world could end today.

I don't believe in the world ending today, but my family thinks I have enough food in my freezer/pantry to qualify as a SHTF person. However those people would just laugh at that notion if they saw my meager supply. Has anyone else noticed that there's a fine line in preserving, planning ahead, being prepared, stocking up, and hoarding?

www.thesaurus.com gave these synonyms for hoarding:
"acquire, amass, buy up, cache, collect, deposit, garner, gather, hide, keep, lay away, lay up, pile up, put aside for rainy day, put by, save, scrimp, sock away, squirrel, stash, stockpile, store, stow away, treasure"

Isn't it interesting how they technically mean the same thing, but you can read such a warm, positive connotation with some while others sound a bit extreme and cause concern for the person being described.

I also think it's interesting in looking up the meanings of this word how quickly they cross with words of greed. Some of the synonyms give a visual image a scrooge or a grinch to me - just hiding everything away so no one else can have any. In fact, thesaurus.net linked the verb hoarding to the adjective avaricious - the root word being avarice. Avarice means extreme greed. Not the image I associate with the housewives of America that do their canning and preserving.

Not sure the point of my ramblings. Perhaps just needed a moment to reflect on the day. I would hope if there were some kind of catastrophe today and I was a SHTF person with all those supplies, that I would have the heart to give to others and share what I had saved. What would be the point of having all of that if you have no one to enjoy it with anyway? And somehow in all of my rambling I arrived back at the reason for the season.

Merry Christmas to all!

ps. does anyone else have that song about the end of the world as we know it stuck in their heads today like I do?

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