What Matters in Life?

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What Matters?

What matters most to you in the world today? People often ask this question. I must say being 26 I have been asked this question many times in my life. The response I always give was my career. Winning and surfing, you see they are the only things that should matter. But I did not once stop to think that maybe the things that mattered more then just a surfing career was my family. I hardly got to see my children in the first stages of their life, never got to see them take their first step or say their first word because I was always out surfing and living up to my dream of being the one that no one could beat.

This al changed drastically one year just after my daughters fifth birthday. I arrived home from a surfing tournament to find my wife and two kids homeless. Lucky for them they weren’t in the house at the time of the fire. The police say that it was because I was the “unbeatable” one and that the other Pro-surfers just wanted to be in the spot light for once. But I say it was a message. A message that maybe it was time to stay at home and help out. A time to watch my children grow up and be there for them.

As we walked through the house going from room to room looking a tall that had been destroyed. All I could think of was my awards and trophies that I would no longer have to show off to the people that came over, to camera reporters when they do interviews about me. My wife asked me “if we were in the house at the time…what would you have taken with you? I replied with “Oh of course my medals and trophies” she sat down as tears welled up in her eyes and said to me “Yes. But what about the pictures that can never be replaced, you can always get more trophies”. It was at this point where I thought long and hard about what I would really take with me if I was given the time. I had thought of clothes and blankets, of the kids toys, but my mind was now set on what really matters. All the things that I wanted to take with me could be replaced, the only things that could never be replaces where the photos and the memories.

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