What if one day you’ll lose everything?
Did you ever asked yourself how you can continue your life and protect the lives of the ones around you if one day you lose everything you have?
One week ago I was giving an interview and one of the question was related to my life, what I would change. I said NOTHING, now I have it all – great family, perfect job, nice house and friends, health.
Previous week I was sad about all the damages of the floods, people lost their houses and other goods. These days I am looking terrified to the events in Greece. We were going to that place every time we travel to Athens. Lately we were keep thinking to go there to visit our family and friends.
We could have been there.
We could lose our lives. We could have been one of them.
This is hard to think but just being there in the wrong moment would have make us prisoners. Things happened so fast that the people didn’t have time to react. It was no time to take the car and to run away, to escape from the fire. The only chance would have been to run to the water and hope to survive.
One of our friends is ok because the wind blew on the other side. But for other people the wind blew on their side. Human lives, pets’ lives, all the forest animals’ lives, trees, houses, cars, shops, anything you can imagine lost in few minutes.
The nightmare let the people who manage to escape with some clothes on them only. Some they lost their family, their friends, their house, and their business. The owner of a shop was asked: you manage to save something? He answered: we manage to save all the lifes. Q: But any goods? A: Who cares about any goods if we are all alive?
We feel protected but we are not
We don’t live in the forest and caves anymore and we feel protected but nobody could have imagine such a disaster, to prevent it or even to stop it in due time.
I am thinking of all these people that escape with life but they have just the clothes on them not to say about food, shelter, money, documents, clothes, medicines, and cars to go to work or even a place of work anymore. How they will start over? Who can help them to do it? The state will have limited intervention and so will be from other NGOs and volunteers.
All these people must start over
On the training, previous week I was speaking about risks.
Terrible things may happen at any time and is not in our hand to control it.
I have seen financial disasters with my eyes, in my bank experience over 19 years and most of them could have been avoided.
Normal people, normal lives, destroyed in a minute by an accident, disappearance of a family member, a bad financial decision, by a medical diagnosis and so on.
People are saying, “I am not able to save money, I spend all I have, I cannot save, I have one life to live aso”. This is a childish attitude, you can do this when you are 5 not when you are 30.
A situation that can lead to a disaster is not asking you when is the perfect moment for you or someone around you to lose the job, the health, to have an accident and so on. You must take care of you and your family before anyone else is doing it! Not the state, not other people in the family, not other volunteers … nobody, but you.
What I would have done in that situation?
I keet asking myself. Is hard not to do it!
If this would happen with my house, car, all my belongings first I would be happy that we are alive. Nothing matter more than this, no doubt about.
But if we would escape with life, the second step is to continue living.
I would have contact my insurance company to start the procedure of documenting the case and obtaining the facility offered by a medical insurance or money for the insured goods or medical treatments and so on.
I would have tried to obtain documents as soon as possible in order to go to the bank, to take from my saving, to move my family to a decent place, to buy some clothes and personal things, and to find a job, to build our live in another place. (Mati for example do not exists on the map anymore, everything there is completely burn, these people need money to recover their health and after to start over, this may happen after a long while. Most of the ones that saved their lives by running to the water have burns over the body due to unbearable heat from the fire, the ones alive and healthy are the ones missing from home at that time).
After the shock is passing, life must continue. Is enough the stress, the deep and black sadness, the losses, the money issue for continuing should not make anything worst.
Wake up call
Now….. NOW …. think if really REALLY your last TV plasma or another dress or whatever you buy maybe using a credit card because “you cannot hold yourself”…… is so important that you CANNOT stop from buying it, even if this can mean to save you and your family one day from a hard situation!
Even if such a tragedy is an exception, there are many things that may happen and are not in our decision if they can happen or when to happen. All people around you can help but… up to a point.
Saving some money can save you and your family one day. Be responsible!
Read also the articles (click on the title)
IS NOT (only) about what you say
Mirror mirror on the wall …. Tell me something new about me!
