You are an engineer.

The word 'engineer' is derived from the Latin ingenium, meaning 'inborn character.'

A practitioner on my Facebook group once wrote about their anxiety and frustration in attempting to help an elderly friend from a distance. They wrote of their fear and uncertainty and the overall lack of any guidance whatsoever about just how to take care of this person should they go on and develop severe consequences of a current infection (COVID) they were dealing with.

Initially, I could feel myself lapsing into a similar sense of futility and was almost at the point of moving on, but something inside of me refused to let go. I thought of those early pioneers on the American prairie, who might have lived on farms that were miles from their nearest neighbors, and doctors who were hours away by horse and buggy. What challenges must they have had to deal with, and with no internet to provide them with useful (and useless) advice and opinions? How did they cope? They did what they could with what they had, and surprisingly this was often good enough.

I’ve spent most of my life studying how our bodies can go wrong, and you’d think that it would have conditioned me to see the Sword of Damocles in everything. But experience has taught me the exact opposite. We ride the rails in a machine of wondrous capability; a device capable of fixing itself like no machine ever manufactured or envisioned.

The vast majority of what is possible is unlikely to occur. Precautions are always in order, but trusting in the rigorous requirements of reality can be very healing.

And you are the engineer (Latin ingenium, 'inborn character') of all this.

Engineers don’t deal in hypotheticals. Their vision extends from logic to math, then to a practical solution, typically with a pinch of artistry. Engineers love structure because it's the scaffolding that holds things up and keeps everything together. Structure often defines the relationship between things, which can tell us a lot about their purpose and how they relate to the world.

We need to think like engineers, with the spirit, confidence, and resilience of pioneers (Indo-European, padam, 'foot')

Pioneers are people who originate and help open up a new line of thought. Pioneers are self-reliant, confident in their abilities, and good at teaching themselves the techniques and skills that each new and possibly unique encounter may require.

Pioneers invented the hack.

Our modern world is built upon and reliant on many interlocking and multi-level dependencies. The constituents of my lunch salad will likely come from many different farms and perhaps even different continents. It is still possible to construct a life entirely off the grid, growing your food, making your clothes, and maintaining a shelter. And there may come a time when these responsibilities become more likely since the ties that bind a society together are more tenuous and frail than we sometimes realize. However, unless you enjoy these things for what they are, and there are many reasons for that, you sacrifice the one thing our interdependent society has provided in significant amounts: free time.

However, I think a decent percentage of that free time should be devoted to increasing one's own self-reliance. That inevitably involves having or developing an interest in how and why things work and a natural curiosity about the world.

There are likely many more, but here's a basic set of skills that I think we all should possess:

Physical fitness
Ability to analyze situations and solve problems logically
Self-confidence, can-do attitude, resourcefulness, curiosity
The belief that your life has a purpose, inward direction, the drive to express yourself
Mental resilience, ability to cope with emergencies
Basic knowledge of anatomy and physiology
Efficiency and preparedness, good reading and writing skills
The basic laws of physics (momentum, inertia, magnetism)
Fire starting
Basics of a working engine
Navigation and map reading
Foraging and food identification
Basic maintenance
Basic carpentry, simple masonry
Basic plumbing
Basic electrical knowledge
Basic knowledge of medicinal plants for simple remedies
Water purification
Canning and preserving
Gardening
Making meals from basic ingredients
First aid
Basic knots and rope work
Repairing clothes or making basic clothing items

Back in ancient times, while in school, the girls took Home Economics classes, and the boys took Shop classes. Everyone should have taken both.

What skills would you add to the list?