My Most Treasured Possessions - A Crate of Beer and a Fishing Box?
What do you treasure most in life? Hopefully family, friends, good health and happiness are higher on the list than possessions, but let's focus on possessions for a moment.
We all collect far too much junk.
Our homes become stuffed full of useless items that we keep because they might come in useful one day, or we simply cannot bear to part with them.
However, if your house caught fire and you had only minutes to save your most treasured possessions what would they be? Freud could probably discern a lot about your character based on your choices.
You can take it from me that in a crisis very often what you rescue is not always what you think is most precious.
I had the great misfortune to be one of the first white commercial farmers kicked out of Zimbabwe by Mugabe and his band of cut throat bandits.
I was travelling home one day from a business trip when I received a call on the radio to say that my family were surrounded by armed drunk thugs who were threatening them bodily harm.
I rushed home to find dozens of drunk men armed to the teeth with AK 47's.
We were informed that we had 15 minutes to leave the house and to take whatever we could carry.
After that the house would be torched.
To fight was pointless.
I was badly outnumbered.
The following 15 minutes are a blur in my mind.
My only thought was getting my family to safety.
We grabbed a few items and departed in one of our vehicles.
When we reached the safety of neighbours I cracked a beer and suddenly had a strange thought.
Under severe duress and without the luxury of forethought what had I chosen to save from the possessions that had taken me a lifetime to accumulate? I popped the trunk of the car and burst out in laughter.
There in front of me was a small suitcase, the photo albums, my tool box, my fishing box and a crate of beer.
What did that say about me? What would Freud deduce from this? We take so much for granted in life.
Here in Britain you assume that what you owned when you went to sleep you would still own in the morning.
That is not the case everywhere in the world.
Where tyranny has found a foot-hold, and democracy has given way to dictatorship the rules of the game are very different.
Even if you're unaccustomed to prayer you should take a moment each day to thank your God, whoever he may be, not only for what you have, but also for what you don't have.
We all collect far too much junk.
Our homes become stuffed full of useless items that we keep because they might come in useful one day, or we simply cannot bear to part with them.
However, if your house caught fire and you had only minutes to save your most treasured possessions what would they be? Freud could probably discern a lot about your character based on your choices.
You can take it from me that in a crisis very often what you rescue is not always what you think is most precious.
I had the great misfortune to be one of the first white commercial farmers kicked out of Zimbabwe by Mugabe and his band of cut throat bandits.
I was travelling home one day from a business trip when I received a call on the radio to say that my family were surrounded by armed drunk thugs who were threatening them bodily harm.
I rushed home to find dozens of drunk men armed to the teeth with AK 47's.
We were informed that we had 15 minutes to leave the house and to take whatever we could carry.
After that the house would be torched.
To fight was pointless.
I was badly outnumbered.
The following 15 minutes are a blur in my mind.
My only thought was getting my family to safety.
We grabbed a few items and departed in one of our vehicles.
When we reached the safety of neighbours I cracked a beer and suddenly had a strange thought.
Under severe duress and without the luxury of forethought what had I chosen to save from the possessions that had taken me a lifetime to accumulate? I popped the trunk of the car and burst out in laughter.
There in front of me was a small suitcase, the photo albums, my tool box, my fishing box and a crate of beer.
What did that say about me? What would Freud deduce from this? We take so much for granted in life.
Here in Britain you assume that what you owned when you went to sleep you would still own in the morning.
That is not the case everywhere in the world.
Where tyranny has found a foot-hold, and democracy has given way to dictatorship the rules of the game are very different.
Even if you're unaccustomed to prayer you should take a moment each day to thank your God, whoever he may be, not only for what you have, but also for what you don't have.
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