Recently and again, in the low mountains surrounding Santa Fe, New Mexico, I saw both beauty and devastation.

The "hills were alive" with both the colors of the Universe and the death Bark Beetles bring to pinion pine. In some spots it seemed that at least half the green scrub pine that used to bring glory to the red earth hills now are dead and brown from beetle infestation.

Some pesticides work, but with high cost and collateral damage. Burning the dead wood spreads the beetle faster than by its own devices, to say nothing of the risk of general forest fire. "What is the answer, then," I asked a resident friend who worries about his own trees. (This beetle is not limited to pine trees. Any tree will serve its survival needs.)

"Lots of rain to help trees regain their own, strong immune systems," was the answer my friend gave me. "The beetles are always around looking for sick, depleted trees."

Resistance to an outside threat from the inside-out rather than treatment from outside-in is the best answer for any terrorist threat. But, that seems to an unlikely, unfamiliar approach for us humans. We are more ready to march with great strength on the enemy of any sort than to first get ourselves in good shape by knowing self and tending to self with lots of "rain".

Why is that so difficult for us to learn: demise from something outside us is only possible if first we allow decay to start on the inside from self-neglect and depletion?

Rain and replenishment in all ways comes to meet all your needs, emotional, financial, spiritual, social, intellectual, and physical. Soak it up to stave off depletion and in turn the "bark beetles" of your life.

Meet your needs in all areas first, then consider what, if anything, needs to be done about the enemy out there for you to survive. If need be, get a good coach to show you how.