A first-person monologue (YouTube) reflecting on a recent trip to Beirut and nearby ancient ruins, contrasting severe economic collapse there with visible everyday life. The speaker draws lessons about human resilience and preparedness, describing how the visit gave them peace and practical motivation to prepare for possible supply disruptions and energy/food shortages at home.
If you've seen me chat a little bit about some of the challenges that I think we're going to go through as a country and what I'm doing to prepare for it personally in my business and with my finances and all of that, I was in a country where it couldn't be any worse in terms of financial collapse. Like I said, banks are closed. Your money is worth one twentieth of what it was a few years ago. There's no, nobody uses credit cards, nobody trusts banks. There's like diametrically opposed political landscape. They don't trust their government like all the bad stuff, yet people were still out and about, people were still driving their cars. There was a Mercedes dealership, there were Starbucks open everywhere. And this is in Beirut, so it's more of a hustle bustle city. But we went out into Beirut in the neighboring valley. I forget the name of it. Amazing experience. We actually visited ruins that were from 100 BC to 200 AD. They were built out over a 300 year period. And just like blow your mind in terms of what, what we witnessed. And I totally forget what it was. It's the valley right over the, you know, the Mediterranean Sea and then Beirut and then it goes over, there's a valley on the other side and even there like it was a tourism place and the gift shop was open and you know, and it struck me that no matter what happens or what would happen in our own country, you know. Watched a little bit of the news this morning when I got back, I only got back a couple of days ago. Watched a little bit of the news this morning and you know, they're talking about for sure, food storages, rolling blackouts this summer in many metro markets. I just for the first time filled up my car just last night and it was $100. It's never been $100 to fill up my gas tank. And even what's going on here now I just have a lot more comfort that I was actually in a city where and there's lots of hardship, there's a lot of folks that don't, they're not able to provide for themselves. And at the same time there are folks that are figuring it out and making it happen and making a way. And so the human spirit, as far as its ability to adapt to whatever situation comes its way really encouraged me quite a bit to just calm down a little bit in terms of what's happening here in our country. I'm not minimizing what might happen. I'm fully prepared and I have a lot of peace around being prepared for what might happen in terms of disruptions in our supply chain, food shortages. I have gasoline, a little bit of gasoline stored up in case there's an energy. Some of the diesel prices may inflate here and gasoline may have a challenge working itself around the country. All those things might happen. And at the same time, we're going to figure it out. It just gave me a lot of peace.
