It shouldn’t take an EARTHQUAKE to smack you upside the head and tell you THIS.

Well.

There I was, sitting in my office, writing up the next all-powerful magnificent blazingly brilliant post of mine, when I noticed….

My house.

• It was shaking.

And my chandelier!

• It was swaying.

In other words….earthquake!

Well, actually, the earthquake turned out to be 200 miles or so south of me in Virginia.

Immediately, I sent out texts to my friends and family and asked all to check in.  We're all safe, yay!

But here's the thing that *really* frosts my petunias….big-time.

Everyone on FB is posting, oOo, earthquake, lolz!

By whatever gods you might worship, my gosh!!

How on *earth* can anyone put the words "earthquake" and "lolz" together in one sentence????????

• Why is this not being viewed as a wakeup call that you *never* know what might happen in the future?

Just this past week, that plain fact of life smacked me and my fellow karate folk in the face, when we learned our sword sensei's son died in a freak accident over the weekend.

You…just…never….know…..

When your life will be cut off just….like….that!

Life, folks, is precious.

And it could be cruelly snatched from you when you least expect it.

But no.

Instead, we have an earthquake reduced in a matter of seconds to just plain humor and ho ho ho's.

How *pathetic*.

Listen.

Life is beautiful.

And the people we love…they're beautiful too.

And every single freakin' day, we should value the fact we *are* alive…and so are the ones we love.

So today…go hug your family and friends.

And be grateful that the oh-so-jolly earthquake didn't crush them with crumbling buildings.

Because I guess that wouldn't be so funny after all, aye?

Grow strong,

Barbara Ling

UPDATE!

My eldest informed me that perhaps I'm over-reacting, which I can admit…is a definite possibility.

I think the whole past week or so has just caught up with me, really.

Mother Nature might have toyed with us today, true.  And playing the 'what if' game; that's always non-optimal as well.

But one of the advantages of taking ownership of my reactions is, I can choose to take away things as I will.

I just don't want death to come knocking around my door anytime soon again.

— btl