One must acknowledge that fire remains decidedly indifferent to matters of wealth or social standing. As flames advance through the neighbourhoods of Los Angeles, consuming both palatial estates and modest dwellings with equal vigour, they present rather a stark lesson in the transient nature of earthly possessions. Within mere moments, decades of careful cultivation—the artworks, the bespoke furnishings, the painstakingly maintained gardens—dissolve into ash and remembrance.
Yet perhaps these conflagrations, in their devastating march across the metropolis, reveal rather more than they destroy.
We spend our lives constructing bastions against uncertainty. Insurance policies, security apparatus, pension schemes, each one as a bulwark against chaos. Yet the Los Angeles fires cut through these illusions of control with rather ruthless efficiency. They remind us that nature holds no particular regard for human hierarchies or achievements. A multi-million pound residence, one discovers, burns precisely as readily as common kindling.
This lesson is hardly novel. Classical philosophers spoke of “memento mori” when they said “remember thou art mortal” as a means of focusing one’s attention on matters of genuine import. These wild fires act as a contemporary memento mori, their smoke signals spelling out age-old truths: all is temporary, security remains illusory, and our most precious possessions are precisely those which cannot be photographed for insurance purposes.
Yet within this rather blunt reminder lies an unexpected gift. When one witnesses the rapidity with which material success may vanish, one is compelled to confront essential questions: What truly constitutes a life well-lived? To what extent are our pursuits worthy of the chase? What remains when everything is reduced to ash?
The aftermath of these fires reveals a rather paradoxical truth: occasionally one must lose everything to discover that which cannot be lost. As survivors gather in evacuation centres, sharing accounts and offering solace, we glimpse what the flames cannot touch – human connection, compassion, the indomitable spirit that rises from the ashes of loss.
Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher, regarded fire as the fundamental element of the universe, the source of both destruction and renewal. The Los Angeles fires rather neatly embody this duality. They destroy without discrimination, yet in doing so, they clear space for new growth, fresh perspectives, novel ways of measuring what matters.
For those watching their lives dissolve in the inferno, this philosophical viewpoint offers precious little immediate comfort. The anguish of losing one’s home – the repository of memories, aspirations, and daily life – remains rather raw and decidedly real. Yet even in this devastation, one witnesses the emergence of something profound: the recognition that home transcends mere address, that community supersedes property boundaries, that meaning resides not in what one owns but in who one becomes.
The fires racing through Los Angeles neighbourhoods write their message in flame: everything we construct is temporary, everything we accumulate is borrowed, and our true wealth lies not in what we possess but in what possesses our hearts. This is not, perhaps, a comfortable truth, but it is one that might, rather unexpectedly, set us free.
© Tales from the Horizon, 2025
