THE IMPORTANT STUFF

By Dan Miller
October 26, 2007

We've all watched the sad images of folks in California sifting through the embers of their homes, destroyed by the wildfires.

Thousands of people -- whose houses sat in these virtual tinderboxes -- lost everything but the clothes on their backs, and perhaps the car they used to drive away from the flames.

I'm always reminded how such disasters can pose a jolting question about priorities and perspective.
If I had to make an instantaneous choice about what to grab before evacuating my house.... what few material items would I try to take with me?

That's the choice these Californians had to make.

In almost every case I've seen on TV, they made the same decision that I would make.
The pictures.
The old family photos and home movies that simply cannot be replaced.

Nobody's grabbing HD televisions, or jewelry, or furniture.
Nobody seems concerned with that diploma on the wall, or the CD collection, or their new desktop computer, or books, or their new winter coat.
Those can all be replaced.

But the photos and the home movies are the real treasures.
Even if we revisit the places where we snapped those photos, we simply cannot go back to the time.

Isn't it interesting, what really matters, when you're facing the looming reality of losing it all?

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