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We all need to eat - thoughts on resiliency

written by

Dustin Schnabel

posted on

December 12, 2020

Text below. Audio here ->> 

The 2008 financial crisis swept across the globe like a swift wind, knocking over every frail financial institution in its path. The chilly breeze blew into the lives of families all over our nation in the form of foreclosures, frozen credit and skyrocketing energy prices. All of this taking place just moments after our leaders promised that “the housing market will never go down.”

We all settled in for a “new normal”.  Gas prices hitting $4.00, adult children and their families moving back in with their parents and wages being smashed by what was being called “The Great Recession.”

I remember it and its teachable moment well. I was a Vice President at a global fitness equipment company, traveling the world on a weekly basis.  One day in Los Angeles, the next in London followed by a week in Japan.  What I witnessed over this decade-long chapter of my life being a hot-shot, bigtime business-man served to shape the lens through which I see the world today.

The entire thing is holding on by a thread, and it could snap at any time.

Fast-forward to today and that sentence will sink in like a stone cast into still water.  Just as a boulder sends out ripples across a smooth lake, Coronavirus 2020 is reshaping our perceptions of a “new normal”.  Six months ago, “social distancing” was not in our vocabulary.  Sixty days ago we could shake hands and -- Wait for it – buy toilet paper! That was yesterday. Today, we wear masks and hand sanitizer is nowhere in sight.  Today, headlines herald the closure of meat packing plants, farmers dumping milk, vegetable crops being plowed under and shortages at the supermarket shelf.  Our world we once knew seems turned upside down.  

The entire thing is holding on by a thread, and it could snap at any time.

Conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen and backseat drivers can always second guess.  The reality is, however, we’re in the driver’s seat and the vehicle is hurdling forward.  We don’t need a tinfoil hat or a loud voice in our left ear telling us that we made a wrong turn.  The windshield needs to be clean and the headlights on bright to see what lies ahead. What can I do TODAY to soften the landing should that thin thread suddenly come unraveled?

In 2009, I took up the study of global financial institutions. Fractional-reserve lending and fiat monetary policy fascinated me. It’s much the same today as everyone becomes the neighborhood’s most well-informed virologist or epidemiologist. Suddenly, we all know how viruses are spread and how to contain them. We become experts at understanding hospital bed capacities and population-based pandemic statistics. After all, we flattened the curve! 

A decade ago is the same as today.  Becoming an expert on what just happened
is a mental merry-go-round that gets us no further ahead in preparation for the next  shockwave to inevitably hit our fragile society.  Ideas need to get out of the head and onto the ground. Intelligence needs to be actionable. The common denominator that I discovered over a decade ago has become even more glaringly obvious today.

We all need to eat.

True one thousand years ago. True today.

While technology has brought us marvelous advances like Zoom rooms and remote worksites, it has not solved this age-old biological reality.  In the wake of The Great Recession, our family listed out the necessities of daily living and set forth a plan to secure a buffer supply of each item on that list. Ultimately, I left the global fitness equipment business in disgust only to find myself today as a farmer. If you would have told me in 2011 that today I would be making a living from the land, I would have laughed at you.  On that same day, however, many laughed at me when I told them I had a one year supply of food and – wait for it – toilet paper!   

Coronavirus 2020 may have changed everything, but one thing remains the same: we all need to eat. Suddenly, a deep freezer and a well-planned pantry seems less like a laughing matter, and more like a life insurance policy.

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