Yesterday we decided to finish packing up the RV and “Get out of Dodge.” When I was a kid, that’s an old saying my mom would exclaim when we were leaving on vacation. Now I find myself saying the same things! Being on the west coast of Florida feels a bit safer now and more options are available to go north, south or just back home once we see what path Hurricane Dorian takes. After we made the decision to leave, I’ll admit I was a bit overwhelmed and quite stressed trying to decide what personal items to take that I hold most dear. I had already packed the essential day to day stuff for survival but now I’m talking about if my house blew away in the hurricane, what would I want to keep that I treasure the most out of my material things? So, I had to take some deep breaths, eat some chocolate, and make decisions. This is a list of the extra stuff I decided to make room for in the RV:
- One large plastic storage bin of pictures and all the research material I have done on my family history
- One drawing pad and set of drawing pencils
- 4 Papermate ink joy gel pens (I love these pens!)
- One small pencil box of miscellaneous pencils, pens, pencil sharpener, white out, etc.
- All my bead boxes (6) and string to make beaded bracelets
- Bible
- A Bible study book on worrying (ironic, huh?)
- 3 of my favorite magazines
- A shoe box size plastic bin of recipes
- My mom’s cookbook
- A large reference book for blogs/websites (called Word Press for Dummies)
Now that I am away from the house and not sure if there will be anything left standing when I arrive home, I wonder what intrinsic value all these things really mean to me? When it comes down to it, I could have walked away without any of this stuff and been just fine. What “Get out of Dodge” meant to my mom versus what it meant to me in a state of semi-panic are two different things. To my mom it was a fun vacation break from her daily routine and to me yesterday, it meant flight from a scary situation. In essence, life and attitude are priceless when it comes to possessions. Now I feel silly about what I decided to take, but in retrospect, as humans, we tend to do silly things!
What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson