I'm concerned this may border on inappropriateness (not to mention that
it may encroach to the edge of insensitivity) to tout what I
got
of value from the North Bay firestorm. I still have
a house.
I still have a warm, dry place to stay. When I go home at night, I know
there's a comfortable bed on which I can rest and dream. My critical
paperwork is intact. None of that's the concern. My concern is for
people who, in one
moment
were homeowners with years of accumulated conveniences and comforts
(you know, the very stuff of our lives) who in the
nextmoment
only owned the shirts on their backs, and very large piles of ash,
rubble, and twisted metal.
I for one, can't even bring myself to
imagine
what that would have been like had it
happened
to me as it did to them. I know I'd eventually
get
on with
my life
- that's a given. I'd have to. But with that said, I just don't have
the adequate mental facility to even fantasize about a loss of that
magnitude - not to mention the sheer terror of it and its
subsequent awful inconvenience. So if I say anything about the
value I
got
from the
experience,
I
intend
to say it inclusive of those people, in their
honor,
with total compassion, support, and empathy, and with
love
and respect.
It was a crystal
clearmoment
(I'm talking about that exact
moment
when I
got
what there was for me to
get
from the
experience).
It was extremely
lucid.
In fact given its urgency, it was oddly crystal
clear.
There was no panic.
Time
stretched infinitely in all directions at once. I was at
peace,
level-headed, and
awake
in a calm, serenely non-adrenalin-charged
way.
It wasn't
the way
I would have expected an
incident
like that to have occurred, especially given the extreme, dire
circumstances.
In now slack-jawed
wonder
I
watched
a fragmented mile-wide wall of flame fifty feet high about four miles
in front of me, moving in my direction at a speed which in other parts
of the valley would later, as the county fire chief noted, become
wind-driven and cross a distance equivalent to a
football field's
length in three seconds - which
means
you can't outrun it, and you may not even be able to
drive
your car faster than it to escape it, especially on our
winding country
roads.
In a
disbelief
which was as
clear
as it was without any shadow of doubt, I knew I may have to evacuate.
So I began
looking
at (ie taking a mental inventory of) what I would take
with me if it came to that. And that's the
moment
my whole
relationship
with the things I own ie with the stuff in
my life,
changed irrevocably forever.
After the firestorm,
I gave my word to myself
I would
get
rid of more than half of what I own. Actually I've done more
than that: I've
gotten
rid of about 85% of what I owned then. And I'm not yet done
getting
rid of, ditching, giving away, selling, recycling all my stuff.
And what I've
gotten
from the
experience
isn't as much about jettisoning all the physical stuff and
the drawer, closet, and shelf space that it made available, as I would
have predicted.
The things I've accumulated belong in one of three groups: one,
essentials; two, items of quality (sentimental items,
photographs,
artwork
etc); and then there's that third group: stuff I've accumulated only
because I never
got
rid of it once it served its purpose ie once its usefulness
expired. It's the accumulation of the latter group which is evidence
of being unconscious to living ie of letting unnecessary stuff clog
my life,
my responsibility arena, and (more
pointedly)
my entire
way of being.
That's what's pertinent here. The thing about the latter group is I see
it's merely a symptom of a perniciously dull
way
I live
my lifeby default (that is, if I don't
wake
myself up to it): I postpone
completingincidents
which are incomplete; I hold off having
conversations
which are long overdue to be had; I put off cleaning up areas of my
relationships
which aren't cleaned up; I delay letting go of preconceptions /
memories /
incidents
/ significances from
the past
which no longer serve any useful purpose for
creating
the
context
in which I live in the
present
and
into which I live as a
future.
That's the stuff I'd actually be overjoyed if it were
unceremoniously taken from me by a firestorm.
Look:
if I tell
the truth
about it, that stuff represents waaay more
than half of what I own: in a very
real
sense, it's almost all of it.