“My whole life is in that house.” That’s what Madonna Badger screamed on Christmas morning as her Connecticut house burned to the ground with her three children and her parents still trapped inside. On December 25, 2011, Ms. Badger lost her past and her legacy.

In an instant, everything for her changed.

I am humbled when I think about how the permanence our everyday life can be so transient  and how ordinary life is what keeps us afloat. We all complain about the everyday. Too many dishes in the sink. Running late for a business meeting or an evening dinner with friends. Traffic. Deadlines. Children crying. We all think we are on the edge with the mundane, but the glory is in those quotidian details.

In an instant, for every one of us, what we may take for granted, can change.

Fill yourself up with all the quiet details in your life. A cup of coffee. The morning commute. The rattling of old pipes or creaky walls in your house. The cries of your five year old’s nightmare in the middle of the night. The sometimes inconveniences of everyday life. They are details to be embraced.

In an instant. It can all change.