Today, someone will lose a leg. Another will lose their sight, yet another their ability to hear.
Perspective helps us understand the relative importance of events in our lives. Tonight, a family will lose one of its members. A town may be lost altogether in an earthquake, a typhoon, or a volcano.
Against these kinds of loses, a minor theft is minuscule. But, losses are particular to each of us. How we respond describes our sense of values.
We have lots of ways of comforting ourselves to buffer pain. Absent this ability, we should surely perish after the death of a child, a spouse, a beloved friend - anyone or anything dear to us.
We all know you have to experience a loss in order to appreciate its impact. We have felt death rip the fabric of our hearts, the pain of jobs lost, patients vanishing into funeral hearses. If our house hasn't burned down, been blown away by a tornado, or been burglarized, we probably don't know how that feels.
Here's what surprised me about my reaction after my luggage was stolen recently. It certainly wasn't the loss of clothes, prescriptions or the suitcases themselves, all of which were replaceable.
It was the loss of my camera, not for the camera, but for the hundreds of pictures I, as a photographer, had been too lazy to download to an album in cyberspace. And it was the loss of my computer with the thousands of ideas I am forever recording there.
I was sorry for the distress the theft caused my wife and children. But, once they saw my own calm, their anxieties eased. I was grateful for their concern, and grateful the concern many of you have shown as well.
Yes, I should have stored things in cyberspace. Regrets don't solve anything except for their ability to goad us into future carefulness.
Of course, the mind can choose another path beyond simple buffering to deal with the pain of loss. Our hearts can find a brighter path.
I was surprised at how little I valued things left on my laptop. Too many of my poems, photographs and script ideas are better re-created.
I can't always find the energy to "make a plus out of a minus" as my father chronically urged me to do. What I can do is try and figure out, once again, what really matters among the things we create.
There is too much that means more than the contents on a computer or camera. Still, it's strange to know that work I valued has fallen into alien hands.
"Like a house fire," my wife sympathized. It was more like a wide ranging robbery of what lawyers call "intellectual" property. What kind of property is that? I've always wondered. What value do our thoughts have?
Our creations mean a lot. But, they pale in comparison to the meaning of the kind acts caregivers do for others - whether remembered or not.
Reverend Erie Chapman
