Today, an earthquake reminded us of something that is easy to forget when life feels ordinary: the ground beneath us is not guaranteed to stay still. For the people caught in it, there is no distance between an earthquake and the rest of life. One moment can hold a completely normal morning; the next can bring fear, separation, loss, and the possibility of never returning to what was familiar.
Watching something like that happen somewhere else can leave you with a strange feeling. You think about the people who were there, the families waiting for calls, the homes that suddenly became unsafe. Then, almost involuntarily, you imagine it happening where you live.
For those of us who grew up in places where earthquakes are part of the collective memory, this thought is familiar. We learn about them through drills at school, through stories from our parents, through photographs and dates that have become part of the history of our cities. We learn what the alarm sounds like before we are old enough to fully understand what it means.
There is also a particular kind of conversation that happens after an earthquake. You check on the people you love. You ask where everyone was. You make sure your family is okay. Friends text each other, sometimes with a joke because it is easier to process something frightening when you can make it feel ordinary again. Eventually, someone asks the question we have probably all considered at some point: what would you do if it happened right now?
The first thought is rarely about possessions. It is about people: Who would I call? Where would my family be? Would I be able to reach them? What about my friends? What if someone I love were somewhere I could not get to?
That is the part of living with the possibility of an earthquake that is hardest to put into words. You can prepare a backpack. You can learn where the exits are. You can memorize emergency numbers. None of that gives you control over what happens to the people you love.
Only after those questions come the smaller ones. What would you take with you? Would you have time to grab your passport, your photographs, something sentimental? Most of us have probably imagined it at least once, even if only for a few seconds.
But the thought is less about the objects themselves than what they represent. A photograph can be the only remaining record of a moment. A piece of jewelry can carry a family story. A book can have someone’s handwriting inside it. Their importance comes from the people and memories attached to them.
That is why earthquakes change the way I, we, think about home. Home is not simply the building that surrounds us. It is the people we expect to find there, the routines we take for granted, and the sense of safety that allows us to move through an ordinary day without questioning it.
When that sense of safety disappears, even briefly, you become aware of how much of everyday life depends on things staying exactly where you left them.
The feeling can be unsettling, but there is something else in it too: a renewed awareness of the people around us. We are reminded to call someone back. To check that a friend got home. To tell our families we love them. To notice the ordinary moments that usually pass without much thought.
Earthquakes are physical events, but their impact reaches far beyond the moment the ground stops moving. They leave memories, change neighborhoods, separate people from homes, and sometimes take lives. For those who experience them, there is no simple return to normal. For everyone watching from somewhere else, there is the uncomfortable realization that it could have been us.
Maybe that is what it means to live somewhere that can shake. You come to understand that the ordinary is more fragile than it feels.You learn to live with a small amount of uncertainty, while still making plans, falling in love, building homes, and imagining a future.
Maybe the most important question is not what we would take with us if we had to leave. It is who we would look for first.
Image credit: Dominique Issermann; “Marseille”, 1992