How do you survive a disaster? Choices we all make them.

I remember watching the towers come down in New York, the Pentagon burning, the people on the roofs in New Orleans, the children in the streets of Haiti, and now the people of the east coast.  Having never been to any of these places I only see their misery on the screen in my living room.  I look on in wonder and think how and why are these people in such horrible circumstance?  Why is it that they were in the paths of such tragedy and not me?  Was it truly random? Was it an act of God?  I am not of the persuasion that "mother nature" exists so won't say it was "mother natures" doing.  I digress, or maybe in this case I could say I focus.... anyway.  But really you know that if you own or have ever owned a TV you have seen the horrors of man kind or of the horrors the world perpetrates on human kind. 

I wonder what my answer would be to their situations.  Would I fold into a useless mass and give up?  Would I be trying to figure out my next move?  Would I be on my knees seeking God?  Would I be trying to call my insurance man or would I be lamenting my lack of insurance knowing I would be starting over with nothing?  Would I be thinking maybe I had some culpability living in the most remote outcrop into the Atlantic because I loved the freedom and beauty of the oceans.  Did my love of the sea over shadow my since that living on an island or coast that required sea walls to just keep off the high tides little own the devastation of a hurricane, knowing I am in a path of one?  Don't we all make choices of where we live knowing that any place we choose to live has its advantages and disadvantages?  I am not sure that I would ever live in an island at sea level or below sea level in the path of a hurricane, but I do live in a state where 70 below is our state record and come to think of it the record for the lower 48.  I actually live less than a 100 miles from it.  Would the persons on those outcropping island find me the crazy one?  Do we all have to learn to live in our environments?  The ones we chose or maybe that were chosen for us because of our ancestors?  Well of course their are the descendants that escape and run from the scary below zero weather to the safety of those low laying coasts, knowing their parents and ancestors were truly nuts, really?

I know I sound as if I jest but I don't life is all about choices, sometimes our number comes up because of our choices.  Actually I would say the eventually all of  our numbers come up one way or the other, it isn't about what happens to you it is what you make of what happens that really counts in the end.  We look on these current victims and we sympathize with them, we shake our head at the one lost because they couldn't bear to leave their home, well they didn't they gave it all to be with their beloved home, so sad that things could be of such value.  I would say that life is all about choices and we only get to choose ours, not any one elses, we only get to review, critic and sometimes shake our heads at our neighbors choices, as they do ours.  How do you make your choices, do you fly by the seat of your pants?  Over think everything into complete stalemate? Go with the flow?  or are you something different somewhere in between? I know beyond a doubt that the people who survive any of these disasters are different people after enduring them, that they are strengthened by fire so to speak, they will probably never make the same choices again.  They are the wiser for their choices, they are older and have knowledge of what for they speak.

Do your choices make you wiser?  Does your life reflect the choices you have made?  Is a hurricane more of a danger to you than where you are going to spend your life everlasting?  Oh, I forgot some of you are so sure no after life exists that you have already rolled the dice and are laughing at us fools who believe in God. Really?  Well, then let me talk to the rest of you the ones still undecided.  Are you so sure that you are gong to hunker down in your little cottage on the coast of life, so to speak, and ride out the hurricane of death hoping you just might survive?  I am not, and haven't, I already made sure I have a ticket to God's shelter of salvation.... tomorrow.