In his newsletter Life Is So Beautiful, Hugh Hollowell shares a story of doomsday, neighbors, and goodwill.
I met a prepper the other day. You know — they store food in the basement in the event the revolution happens and we all turn to cannibalism. He was at my house, and was looking at the layout for my little vegetable garden I am planning. He shook his head, and said I could grow more food than that, and then I would have lots to store up for “hard times”.
Nah, I said. “This is enough. It’s enough for us to eat and to have enough to share with our neighbors. This way, it still leaves room for beautiful flowers, and the beautiful yard and the shared food are like insurance payments, in a way. When hard times happen, we will have a bank of goodwill with our neighbors we are counting on to see us through.”
He told me I was naïve, and that my neighbors wouldn’t care about me at all.
“Maybe you are right”, I said. “But if I believed that, then I am living in the hard times now, and I sort of refuse to do that.”
He left our house unconvinced, but I will share some of my tomatoes with him anyway.
I often think of myself as a pessimistic optimist (or an optimistic pessimist) but if pressed to choose, I believe that people work together and help each other far far more than they work against each other.
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