Optimizing to incompetence

The legend of the frog in the hot water is one that I certainly understand.  You know the story… if I frog jumps into hot water he will immediately jump out but if a frog is in cool water and you slowly turn the heat up he will stay until he is quite literally cooked.  It is easy to get complacent with “the way things are”.  We are busy, we are living our lives and trying to get things done, who can trouble themselves with all these other issues?

Since most of my readers live in the DC area, you likely recognize the picture to the left as a result of the massive storm we had a few weeks ago.  The shocking this is that I took the picture this morning. The inability to clean up this mess is indicative of the larger issue of what we have gotten used to here in the DC area.

I spent this past weekend with some out of town relatives. We got on the topic of all of the food in my freezer that I lost. One responded in shock and commented that she couldn’t imagine if she lost her freezer because she would lose hundreds of dollars. My mind immediately went to the fact that that could never happen to me. Having lost power so frequently I would never allow myself to have that much in my freezer.  My life has become optimized to the faults of my electricity provider.  Instead of working to change the problem, I have adjusted my life.

In the case of the power outages, I am not sure there is much I can do. But, it does make me wonder what other places I have just blindly adjusted my own patterns to accommodate incompetence or unacceptable conditions.

~e