Does it really matter who is in office as the President?  What are you going to do to improve your life during the next few years?  Are you going to wait and see what the government can do for you, or take the bull by the horns and do it yourself?  Do you even know what you can do to make your life better?  What are the most important things to work on?  What is important to you?  What do you want to be different for you personally?  What are your dreams?  What can you control; and what controls you?  Do you know how to obtain more peace in your life, calmness in your spirit, connectedness to your being and your world?  Do you want to have a sense of being the director of your life instead of outside sources?

There are so many questions to answer, and those answers funnel down into one basic element: SUSTAINABILITY.

Face it, we are all dependant, or interdependant of each other.  It's not a bad thing at it's core, but we have had a few gliches thrown into our interdependance cycle recently.  This countries leadership, as well as every citizen, knows we have been too dependant on foriegn oil sources for too long.  This is the basis of the "Peak Oil" statement.  There is not an endless supply of crude oil anywhere on earth.  Scientist are able to measure the remaining supply and are now telling us that we have used up over half of all the oil that the dinosaur age created and is stored under the earth's crust.  Since we use up greater amounts of it everyday, the rest of the supply will not last as long as the first half of the supply.  The foreign nations know this and will use our dependance on their oil as a tool to manipulate us.  The leaders of our country will then be making some very hard decisions about how much we will allow ourselves to be mainpulated by people who don't like us.  The combination of greed and power elsewhere will eventually impact everyone on American soil, walking right into our kitchens and dining rooms.

The measure of dependance most American's have on others, both domestic and foriegn, has never been greater.  Being a 'dependant' has both subtle and obvious impact on every person.

We do not wake up every morning and wonder where our next meal is coming from, literally.  Like children, we have faith that it will be placed in front of us at the right time and all we have to do is eat it.  If you think about current events and the possibility of a "worse case scenario", it will follow that one day the price of food will impact it's availability on your plate.

We can look at the debacle the housing market is in, we can feel the impact of inflated gas prices, we know we are in a depression officially, and some, if not all of these things will eventually catch up to us, reaching into our kitchens and will take us by surprize if we are not prepared to be somewhat self-sustaining in our lifestyles.  Most urbanites will not be prepared, will empty all the food off the shelf and then whine to the government that there is no more or that it cost way too much.  They say that civilization is only 3 meals deep.  What will we be then, when there is no more easy, cheap food available, we can't afford to drive to the store, we don't have a job and no money to purchase it, etc.  There must be some reason why there were more foreclosures in this country than home purchases this year.  Do the people who are foreclosed on change they way they do things, learn a lesson from it, or do they really care what it all means?  Where did they go?  They aren't buying more houses.  Is Uncle Sam helping them save their homes from foreclosure?  Oops! too late.  Uncle Sam was part of the problem, not part of the solution.  Now who do they turn to? 

I think it is simply too late for 'business as usual' for  people in America.  We must look to becoming more self-reliant, use much less of the fuel reserves where we can, recycle as much as we can, and grow as much of our own food as we can.  It will require us to take a very hard look at how we exist day to day and just what is really important.  Do we really have to drive our kids all over the state to compete in sports, etc?  Do you really 'have' to have a coffee from a drive-thru shop that has a name that doesn't even sound like coffee?  Do your kids really have to be bussed to that magnet school across town, instead of walking to the one in the neighborhood?  Will you expire if you don't have a manicure of flags on your nails for the 4th of July?

I also think that we will go on with our lives they way we always have until something really big jolts us out of it.  Most people don't think about the possibilities, they only want what they want and they want it yesterday.  Americans have a hard time waiting for anything. 

Where do you see yourself in all of this.  Are you more dependant than you want to be?  Are you seeking to gain some real control over the basics of life?  Do you have a plan to change dependance to self-reliance, going as far as you can, as fast as you can?

Small changes, practiced every day are like money in the bank, they add up and pay us back with interest.  Every time you look at your choices and change them, you are becoming more self-sustaining.  Will you buy your children toys made in China that won't last very long, or do you enphasize giving to others more than what you get during the Christmas season, spend more time with your children so they won't need the newest videos to be happy, or teach them how to make things themselves?  Consumption is probably the biggest issue to tackle for most of us, but it can be tackled and conquered.  Take it a step at a time, and eventually you get there.  Rethink what is 'good' and what is frivolous.  What is needed and what is not.  Recycle everything you can.  Think about how many coats you own and where they were made and how they got to you.

If you have some resources, like a large backyard, look at it with different eyes.  You can do a lot with 500 square feet of ground toward self reliance.  Put up a small greenhouse and start gardening year round, keep a composter going inside of it in the colder months, become acquainted with the rythms of the seasons and let it dictate what you do for recreation.  I don't mean going snow skiing in the winter and water skiing in the summer.  It means knowing how to use nature to your benefit, when to plant outdoors, succession planting for extending the weeks you have food to harvest, putting the cool loving crops in time to harvest them after the weather cools down, learning how to garden in the greenhouse in the winter, developing a new skill like hydroponics, etc.  Set yourself up to be less dependant on going to the store.  Learn to cook differently, to rely less on already prepared foods that come from store freezers in a box with dubious ingredients.  Catch on to the Slow Food Movement, become a Localvore, garden organically, reduce, reuse and recycle everything.  Even having a yard sale  is a form of recycling.  Some cities have "Free-cycle" where you can post a no longer needed item and someone who needs that item can come and get it at no cost.  Get involved in your neighborhood council and push for leaf recycling, clean gutters, and natural landscaping without a lot of lawn so it will require fewer chemical fertilizers going down the sewer system.  There is so much that can be done, and there are so many opportunities to make a difference where you live.  We actually do have answers to most of the earths and societies ills, we do have options.  There is a lot of misconception about just about everything and you have to find out what is really fact and what is just hype when it comes to alternative choices we may face.

This entire process can actually be a fun trip down discovery lane instead of a drudgery.  It helps to talk to others who are doing the same thing, and they are a growing number of us every day.  There is a lot of tried and true wisdom to tap into on just about every subject to help us meet our own goals.  There are no judges with stop watches, but there is a large crowd of cheering bystanders to encourage each of us.