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It's not just stuff

Jason Kratz
1 min read

When there is a natural disaster and people are losing everything but their lives we often hear someone say "But it's just stuff. At least they're alive. Stuff can be had again". Nonsense.

I get the sentiment. The most important thing is that people are still alive and we're trying to be supportive by saying all is not lost, you're still alive and able to rebuild. But as humans we are more than just an entity being alive. Some of that "stuff" is what has helped define us as people: photos, old family letters, cherished books, etc. It's not just stuff, it's our history.

Take a second to think about everything you have in your house that you cherish. Think about the history of things that have happened in your house or town. If that is destroyed in a fire or flood a bit of you, of us, is gone forever. It's not just stuff.

thoughts

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