My wife and I are going to Indonesian classes.

Yes, it is a very mid life crisis thing to learn a new language but, it is better than learning and instrument (everyone has to listen to you practice) and it is most definitely better than buying a sports car!

We are doing it at the Adelaide WEA and our instructor is a wonderful Indonesian man called Budi.  (There’s a great little video about him coming and living in Australia at YouTube)

He not only teaches us the language but teaches us about the culture, his culture, and where sometimes we just don’t quite line up.  I did a foundation course with Budi before setting off on this year long course.  One of the things that stuck in my head about the difference in culture was that he said he rarely told his children or relatives, including his Mum and Dad that he loved them.  He most certainly didn’t do it every time he said goodbye or at the end of every phone call.  He said he didn’t need to because they knew he loved them and they knew because of the way he treated them, respected them and behaved as a man respecting their values and the values of the family.

In our last lesson we were learning about terms of address, similar to our Sir, Madam, Mister and Miss etc.  The must common term we were using as a sign of respect was ‘Anda’ which was probably best equated to English as Mr/Mrs/Sir/Madam.   We were also learning about telling people about ourselves where we would use the word ‘saya’ meaning ‘I’.

Someone in the class asked Budi about the capitalisation of the words, does Anda always have a capital ‘A’ and does saya always have a lower case ‘s’ as that is how Budi had been writing it on the whiteboard.  He explained it like this:

“In Australia “I” is always in capitals as the centre of the Universe is I or me – in Indonesian culture the priority is the other person,  Anda,  or You.  So in Indonesia saya (I / Me) has a small ‘s’ and is always secondary to Anda (You) which has a capital ‘A’.

There was some nervous laughter in the class, but there was also a bit of a realisation that ‘I’ is the predominant focus, the capitalised word, in our culture.

I wonder how my day would go if I just, even for one day, decided that everyone else in MY word was more important than me;  that I would stop telling everyone I loved them and show them instead, that I would stop being the centre of the Universe.

I think we can all remember the ‘Fire Drills’ we had a school – do they still have them?

And if you are working in any modern office where everyone is allergic to risk (other than in board meetings where they talk about risking other peoples money) and every month or so there is an ‘evacuation practice’ in case of an emergency in the future.  Gotta love the volunteer Office Fire Warden – you know who they are, they also run the social club and coffee fund (and organise the cake and morning teas for birthdays – kill me!)

Also, there would be few among us who don’t know where the exits are on a plane and how to put on a life jacket – which always troubles me that we are supplied with and instructed how to put on a life jacket in a plane – wouldn’t a parachute be a better idea?

So, we all know how to evacuate and what to do in a fire.

It’s also a bit of a truism that we all have a little plan in our heads what we would grab.  I think most of us would get the kids first, then the pets and then the photo albums (or now days the hard drive with all the digital photos on it).

Why?

The reason I am asking is that we spend all of our lives working our guts out, working long hours, saving, going into debt, to get all the luxuries in our life – yet, we grab the photo albums.

Shouldn’t we grab the new flat screen TV, the iPad, the Thermomix and the Dyson Vacuum?  We must grab them because, they are the things that we have been working for: they are the things we have been missing our family time for, they are the things we have worked overtime for, they are the things we missed our kids concert for, theya re the thing that cause the reasons we didn’t visit Mum and Dad, theya re the things that we tell ourselves are important to make us happy.

But, no, we grab the photo albums!!!

So, what is wrong with this picture (no pun intended on the photo albums reference).

What is wrong, is it perhaps takes a fire for us to realise what we are really working for; what we would leave behind, what we would take, what we are working for.

We’d leave the albums for the pets.
We’d leave the pets for the kids.
We’d stay ourselves to save the kids.

Sometimes after fires we see on the news people standing around the ashes of their homes crying.  What are they crying for?  Their plasma TVs, their photo albums or just the plain fact that they are alive.

I have decided that if my house catches fire, or if that plane goes down (other than wishing my life jacket was a parachute!) I am not going to worry about what I have to take with me.  What I have to grab at the last minute, or what is most important to me.  They are all just things – the stuff of real value I already have with me, everyday.

Perhaps we should all have a personal ‘fire drill’ and work out an evacuation plan to decide what are the important things worth saving – perhaps it really is ourselves, our kids, our Mum and Dad – okay, we’ll take the cat I hate as well.

Before any evacuation find yourself on the map and work out which way to go.

The fire hasn’t started yet – it might only be a little spark.  It is now – you are still here.