Who and What Do We Take For Granted?
A water main broke on our street yesterday, and that meant an entire day without running water. No flushing toilets, no drinking water, no dishwashing, nothing that required water. It stayed off until about 10:30 last night when we heard the blessed sound of water rushing back into the pipes. We had a similar experience a couple of years back when a tornado struck very close to our house taking out the electricity and damaging the water service. That time we were without power and water for three whole days.
These experiences make me think about all of the wonderful infrastructure I take for granted each day. I turn the tap, I have fresh, clean running water. I flip a switch, and I have electricity to power lights, TV, refrigerator, and computers. I drive down a relatively well maintained highway using gasoline that was pumped in Canada or South America, delivered to a refinery on the Gulf Coast or somewhere in the Midwest, and finally ends up at my neighborhood gas station. Most days I am blissfully ignorant of all of the people, planning and hard work that goes into providing the comforts that underlie my lifestyle. Because other people worry about those issues, I am free to develop software, write this blog, and read to my heart’s content. Other people using their talents and abilities, allow me to use my talents and abilities, and we all make a unique contribution to society.
I am grateful for the people who came out to our neighborhood yesterday, a couple of days after a holiday, to work in the cold and wind and repair our water main. I am thankful for the flagman directing traffic around a road repair. I am thankful for the truck drivers who deliver food, fuel, and all kinds of material goods to the stores I shop at. We inhabit a complex interdependent society requires the hard work and commitment of thousands of other people every minute of every day. Stop for a moment and consider how your current lifestyle is built on top of innumerable systems and people, and think about how different your life would be if those systems and those people suddenly stopped working. None of us is an island, and we wouldn’t have the wonderful world we have today if we tried to live that way.
