Card Declined
Preparation, predictions, and the illusion of control
“I’m sorry, your payment method has been declined.”
Taking a breather from packing the apartment, I check my email. Like the brown boxes piling up along the walls, my inbox lists message after message about a problem processing my payment. Apple Music, HBO, Hulu, and on.
I check my card. It’s not expiring.
I check my account. No missing money, no alerts.
For some imperceptible reason, my main form of payment is out of commission—and I’m moving tomorrow.
This would all be a minor inconvenience but for the timing. I’ll survive without Succession. But I closed my bank accounts in Florida, and it’s a long drive to Ohio. How will I pay for gas? What will I eat?
The number of things that can go wrong.
My most recent purchase was a haircut. I suppose it was in preparation for the move—or in celebration of the semester’s end. Final projects have left me a little shaggy.
The woman cutting my hair had showered me with questions about the Ohio cold: “What do you do when it’s snowing out? Does everyone get bundled up?”
“Not really,” I answered. “In high school, half of the guys wore gym shorts through the winter.”
“You must keep blankets and coats in the car in case of storms.”
“Honestly, it becomes normal.”
Blankets in the car. I guess that’s a smart idea, in the same way I kept a gallon of water in the backseat when driving the Arizona desert.
Here in Florida, I pull a 24-pack of water from the freezer to thaw. I keep it here for hurricanes; it keeps the freezer cold in case of a power outage, and it’s potable if the town’s water goes down.
Won’t be needing this anymore.
If I can’t pay for food, at least there’s plenty of water.
I wonder how many Arizonians keep water in the trunk. It can’t be many. I don’t know a single Ohioan with a blanket or coat in theirs.
These are smart ideas; it’s good to be prepared. But no one does them.
Preparation is an interesting concept. We value it in theory, but it’s difficult in practice. We don’t prepare for what we know, and we don’t know what to prepare for.
Like Ohioans with the snow, we humans can become accustomed to just about anything. And it makes it hard to prepare. I don’t blame us. Once you’re familiar with something, you don’t naturally imagine the ways it could wrong—the ways it could be different this time. I’m just driving down the road; why get bundled up? We don’t prepare for what we know.
If we try to be ready for every scenario, though, we still never know what’s coming. I packed my things, forwarded the mail, got my brakes changed in preparation for the trip. But a mysteriously defunct debit card—who can predict that? I’m left without ability to conduct commerce, and I never could have predicted that. Even when we try, we don’t ultimately know what to prepare for.
We tend to mistake the familiar with the predictable. And we mistake preparation for something we never have—control.
Thankfully, my water bottles in the freezer prepare me for what I couldn’t have expected. I bought them for a storm, but they’ll save me on a road trip.
Preparation is a conundrum. We prepare, yet there’s very little we can predict. You control what you can, yet we shouldn’t deceive ourselves that we’re in control.
Ironically, though, preparation for one scenario is serving me in another. Maybe that’s the way life works.
It’s an interesting reminder: life is unpredictable. I guess I’ll just roll ahead.
Not to be petty but my wife keeps a blanket in her car... she is not a “prepper” but definitely a “be prepared”.
Will be nice to see you again!
Glad to have you back to the dark side, as it were.