They're only things. People are more important

I don't mean to diminish the severity of the situation in California, but I think a little perspective is in order.

I feel for the people who have died in this tragedy, not so much the people who have lost their homes, but otherwise made it out OK. It's terrible, but it's not the end of the world.

Things are just things.

Sorry but I'm not emotionally stricken by seeing people cry over losing something that I've never had in the first place, a home, and probably never will....

So expect some more. The reverse 911 seems to have worked well for getting people out in time.

The dead are out of it. They don't feel a thing. So it's very safe for you to only feel for them. Did it occur to you that losing your home, your habits, everything that has surrounded you as yours which is your entire control of your life can kill also? Perhaps a little more slowly than fire, but deadly as well? I guess not.

The suicide rate in NOLA skyrocketed. You think it was only because people were poor?

Your compassion is...where is it, exactly? Oh, right. In the grave.

i think you are diminishing the severity of the tragedy a little bit, considering that the fires aren't a natural disaster with a high death toll

it's true if it's a choice between losing my life and losing my house i'd rather lose my house, the people i know who died in katrina are dead forever

however, the people who lost their houses also had serious losses and sometimes great mental distress, when you lose your possessions, you also lose all the little memories and the past that comes back whenever you used to handle those possessions, you lose a certain link to your own past and your own family, you also lose a feeling of security because you see how quickly everything you've worked for in your life can be swept away which makes you feel like nothing

a man i know lost everything as a teen-ager in camille, and he was forever haunted by it, just little things, such as having no photo of himself as a child, having no photo of his parents when they were young, when katrina came, he put his wife in his car, he drove her to a safe place, he said he was tired, and went to lay down, he never woke up again

he was 54 years old

i think the stress of having it to do all over again was too much, so his heart just gave up

not sure what the point of my story is, except, don't underestimate the pain that people are in when they have lost everything financially

things AREN'T just things, they are memories, and in some cases where people are under or un-insured, they are also financial survival

As a person who lost almost everything in a flood a few years ago, my first reaction is to agree totally with the OP. Luckily we had flood insurance. We stayed with my father-in-law for a few days until we found a new apartment and we got to get cool new stuff (including a mid-90s Honda to replace the 80s Honda that was totally submerged by the flood) and things are fine and dandy now.

But a lot of people in the apartment complex didn't have flood insurance. I don't doubt that a few of them have never recovered financially. Plus - a lot of Katrina victims made it out alive and lost everything and have never gotten back on track.

So yeah, some of the people will be okay in the end. But I imagine that a lot of them didn't have good insurance and don't have the money saved up to get right back on track.

But still, the OP makes a good point too. Lives are more important than things, and frankly I'd rather be alive and have my loved ones alive and deal with financial struggle than lose my life or the lives of loved ones.

Material things are not memories. Memories are personal recreations of events that you re-experience through your imagination. It's given that items may manifest a particular event, or jog the memory of a certain event, but the loss of the item can never destroy the memory.

Far too many people judge themselves and others by possessions. I think most people treasure a possession more than the experience of it and equate the loss of the possession with the loss of the memory.

Fanciful I know, but I believe that you watch your house burn to the ground and witness your life collapsing around you or you can witness a rebirth. It's where you are looking that will determine where you end up.

But that doesn't diminish what it's like to lose everything you own. Pictures, mementos, things made by hand by yourself or a loved one, the drawings by your kids on the refrigerator, pets... A lot of things that people are losing cannot be replaced. People can recover and start over again, but I don't think many completely get over what they lost. I don't think I would. I can't imagine the mad rush around the house making instant decisions about what to save before leaving it all behind to evacuate. And some aren't even getting the chance to do that. It's heartbreaking, even if it isn't the absolute worst thing that can happen.

It is a place of comfort and warmth filled with beautiful memories. When everything else is going wrong, I can crawl into our bed and curl up in pillows with a familiar scent or I can snuggle up in a chair that is as familiar as breathing.

I cannot contemplate the pain of all those hundreds of people who have lost the place where peaceful waters lie. Sorry there is some serious emotional trauma taking place and I won't minimize their pain. I just put myself in their place and feel very weepy. Losing your home is not losing a thing and you never get over it.

What's more, I'm not sure all these homes had to burn. If FEMA had started using these jets, etc since Saturday night, these people may not be suffering the way they are today. I beg you don't trivialize serious pain.

and I think that the state, not FEMA, is responsible for the aircraft.

"you say you have lost something? you have lost it not. it was restored to the universe. it was never yours to begin with."

or something to that effect.

when every home in st. bernard parish (a parish is an entire county, with multiple cities and towns) was flooded, where was he to preach how "you have lost it not"

in a reality based world when you have lose your material possessions you are set back financially, you are set back in your ability to connect with your own past and your own memories, and often your mental and even your physical health is affected

in new orleans after katrina suicides went thru the roof -- we are physical beings living in a material world and without "things" we struggle to survive -- seeing a lifetime of work, and sometimes multiple generations of work, lost in a day, is a grief that shouldn't be minimized

i have heard survivors too say "it's only things" but it means something different when they say it, basically, it means they are trying to keep a stiff upper lip and be brave and not burden you

when someone who hasn't been there says it, it's really just disgracefully bad manners because it's about minimizing someone else's misfortune, which is a pretty cheap place to stand if you ask me

probably has been given more credence in the past couple thousand years than most of the people who post nonsense on internet message boards.

sometimes it is better to NOT interpret all aspects of the knowable as extensions of our own personal identities.


who a person IS subsists solely in the intangible. anything exterior to you can be taken away, it might be destroyed, you might undergo all manner of calamity. the point of epictetus is to cleave unto those thing which have permanence. that is why most philosophers have always talked about the condition of a person's soul rather than the possessions they might accumulate. possessions are transitory. life is for the living.

It's about seared earth. It's about a place so dry that we can't live there.
It's about the planet.
I weep for all the losses. Life, homes. But there's more to fear here.
We have been screwing around with Mother Nature and she's paying us back, the only way she can.

"just things" ie their homes, thank you for your compassion.

then lost my home a few years later due to a house fire.

True, family is more important, but when you go home to nothing......... an emotional loss is there. It's hard to put it into words, but there are 'things or possessions' that can never be replaced when you lose your home. For instance, the only picures I have of my children as they grew up have been given to me by friends or family. Simple things, like a photo of a rose that was given to myself and my now-ex, on our wedding day is forever gone. It's not like losing a loved one, but it can still break your heart when you think about it.

some things, many things, perhaps even most things are just things.

but there are other "things".

"things" like the ornaments you hang on your christmas tree - the ones your kids made in daycare and elementary school - you know, the ones with their hand imprints, that you can caress each year and see how they grew...

"things" like the painting by some local artist that you got from your grandmothers estate and certainly wasn't "worth" anything, but made you smile when you walked past it, because it reminded you of your gran.

"things" like your mother's wedding dress.

"things" like the (somewhat uncomfortably) racy letters your dad wrote to your mom when he was in korea.

"things" like the handwritten recipe passed down from your g-g-g-grandmother for that ethnic recipe that you loved.

"things" like the cross-stitch your aunt made for you when you were born - before she got arthritis and had to stop doing needle-point.

"things" like your children's hospital wristbands from when they were born, their little blankets, and 'stuffies', and first pair of shoes - their baby books, painstakingly recorded...

i hope that everyone in california that loses their home can replace the things that can be replaced. the couch, the perfect kitchen, the wallpaper, the hard-to-find out-of-print book about versailles, the waterford vase, the ikea bookshelf - those things are just things and are probably listed on ebay.

i suppose there is a scale to measure tragedy - death and loss of loved ones at the top of the scale. and sure, yes, just because you lost your home, it's not the end of the world- but it is still a tragedy. and it's probably only a 'minor tragedy' for the parents, children, grandchildren who lost the irreplaceable bits of sentimental family history they had been hanging on to- as long as you are not that parent, child, grandchild.

lynyrd_skynyrd, i think a little perspective is in order.

And the memories that go with them.

The fires are uncontained right now, and there are people in harm's way.

Call me superstitious, or whatever. But it never pays to be too quick to call yourself safe -- that's almost like daring something to prove you wrong.



Maybe I just can't forget all those dumb-ass reporters on August 29th, 2005 chirping away that New Orleans had "dodged another bullet" -- at the very moment that the 9th Ward was already swiftly filling with water.