In the end, it is the person you become, not the things you achieve, that is most important. Nor is it the stuff you collect.
Don’t get me wrong, I like my stuff the same as the next person, but one thing I have discovered over the last few years; stuff is simply stuff. At the end of the day, and even your life, stuff is just stuff.
I was reading about a family who lost everything in a house fire. In a matter of minutes everything they had worked so hard to gather over the years…gone. The family had gotten out safely and that was all that really mattered. The young son put it into perspective when he said, “It’s just stuff. We can always get more.”
Brilliant words from such a young lad. You can always get more. In fact, a lot of folks spend a lifetime getting more stuff.
I have come full circle with that concept. I have never experienced a fire, or flood, or a natural disaster of any kind, that simply swept in and took all my stuff with it. But I have been thinking along those lines of late, reflecting on that week in August several years ago, when my family had to sort through all we had accumulated over the past thirteen to thirty years, and decide whether to pitch it, give it away, keep it with us, or put it in storage.
I’ve often wondered if it wouldn’t have been easier simply to have lost it all in one fell swoop instead of agonizing over where it went, should I have kept it or do I still have it somewhere, packed away.
Not going to lie, those were difficult days that followed, adjusting to this new, lighter-load family we had become. But I have also come to realize even on those days that I wish my present stuff and absent stuff could reunite and reside in everlasting bliss under the same roof, I am doing just fine without it. Sometimes I miss it. I’m glad I still own it but my life has and is continuing on. For that I am grateful.
And, if the truth be told, most of the stuff I did leave behind or got rid of, I’ve forgotten all about is several years ago.
It’s not about the stuff we gather, but a life well lived.
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