Survivalist Guilt

Everyone knows about that strange psychological affliction survivors of traumatic events get called "Survivor's Guilt." I think I've discovered a new disease: Survivalist Guilt.

This morning at 11:30 I and my family returned home from a most...educational camping trip. First allow me to describe the events of the camping trip in some broad strokes.

Out of curiosity and because I love the convenience of the tools at hand, I decided to check the weather at the location of our annual camping trip. Saturday warm and clear. Sunday rain and cold. Monday more rain and more cold. We were getting up there on Saturday morning and planning on returning Monday.

I informed everyone (my wife's brother and his family) of my weather forecast findings. My wife had a very good point about my not exercising sufficient faith to prevent the weather from turning bad, but that's another post for another time.

Saturday was indeed nice. Kids went swimming in the nearby lake, excellent conversation with good friends, fun kayaking on the lake, some firearm practice (remarkably vindicating!), the scent of campfire and the twinge of mosquito bites. Sunday evening, Sunday night, Monday morning...not so nice. Rain, hail, more rain, and a bit more rain.

Turns out the warning on our tent's instruction manual was correct: under steady barrage of water, tent may leak. We awoke--or rather arose, considering no one slept all that much except the youngest ones--to quite the sodden mess. Wet bedding, soaked clothing, drenched campsite and one water-damaged book on loan from a good friend (the greater tragedy). And the greatest tragedy: my kids are all coming down with various ailments. One's coughing, one's complaining about a headache--which, incidentally, we dismissed yesterday as her fault for having eaten so much junk food and not drinking enough water, and now my head is pounding so hard it feel like my eyeballs are about to be crushed from the inside. Gotta love karma. Or poetic justice. Or the ignorant presuppositions of know-it-all parents dismissing a kid's concerns as childish and beneath notice.

The majority of Monday was spent packing up dripping camp gear in such a way as to minimize water-damaging our family vehicle, setting that same gear back up again, drying it off, tearing it back down and finally putting it away in the garage until the next occasion. The holiday effectively burned away with exhausting, unpleasant activities.

As I washed the stink of 3 days' sweat, campfire and mud off my body a few minutes ago I asked the question of myself again, as I often do after most camping trips. "Why do we do this again?" The trite answer is, "Because it's fun!" Come on. What about the above sounded fun? Well, except for swimming, kayaking and conversing--but even those are proving to have consequences that are difficult to qualify as "pleasant." The answer came unbidden: "Because we like to be reminded of how good we have it."

Of course that was not a satisfactory answer, considering that not many of us go around crushing our thumbs with hammers because it makes us more grateful for when all our digits are operating under factory specifications. That left the only other explanation I could dredge up: we do it because we feel guilty for our easy, mundane, catered, technologically-enhanced lives--lives that our ancestors were not able to enjoy because they lacked the tools and opportunities we have because they were too busy with the day-to-day tasks of surviving.

Given the amount of time we spent in attempts at mitigating the consequences of our communion with a Mother Nature who seems to revel in proving who the boss is, it's a fair wonder we're as advanced as we are. And thank God we are! Now time to go rest up from the rest and nurse everyone back to the health robbed from them by our rest and healing time.