306. The Things You Take - Or - Fire Doesn't Care

The Palisades Fire started on the hill behind my daughter's school. It gained momentum and forced people to make some tough decisions. What would you do?

Jeff Matlow

Jan 20, 2025

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The fire started on the hill right behind my daughter's school in Pacific Palisades.

The hills are lush and beautiful. Or at least they were before they became apocalyptic.

We are one of the few families at the school that don’t live in Pacific Palisades. We live in Brentwood, the neighboring town.

Most families that go to our school have lost everything. Their homes, their personal belongings - it’s all in ashes. Literally and figuratively.

Many people were at work, so they didn’t even have a chance to get home and get things before it was gone.

Here’s an interactive map showing - house by house - which ones have been destroyed.

When The Wind Is At Your Back

To understand the Palisades fire you have to understand the winds.

On that day, Tuesday, January 7, there was already a Red Flag Warning throughout Los Angeles. It was already predicted to be the worst windstorm to hit the city since 2011.

January 7, 2025, was the single worst day in over a decade for a fire to get ignited in Los Angeles.

Yet it did.
Because fire doesn’t care.

So with one spark, 65 mph winds stoked the fire and then blew millions of hot embers down the road to ignite other fires.

That’s how it works when the wind is at your back - you move a lot faster than you ever expected.

Sometimes that’s good in life. Sometimes it’s bad.

In this case, it was bad. Very bad.

It is how the fire quickly and brutally destroyed all of Pacific Palisades and began devouring the edges of Malibu and Brentwood.

Fire Doesn’t Care

I wouldn’t say we live in an upscale part of Brentwood, but it’s all relative. The home prices around us are in the $2-3m range. Five blocks up the street is where real estate prices hit $10m and above.

Kamala Harris lives a mile and a half from us. So does LeBron James. And Jim Carrey. And lots of other people you do and don’t know.

For a fire to get to us, it has to burn through them.

In the past, I’ve told myself that will never happen.
Those types of properties will never be destroyed by fire.
Those types of people will never have those types of problems.

But I was wrong.

Fire, as it turns out, doesn’t give a shit about money or celebrity or material things.

Fire doesn’t care about anything but destruction.

When the evacuation zone moved to within five blocks of us, things started getting real.

It was time to pack our bags and prepare to bug out.

What Is Important To You

We own a modicum of stuff, my wife, daughter and I.

I wouldn’t say we are overly material people, we don’t need super fancy cars or wildly expensive jewelry, but we enjoy comfort, we like cool new things, and we love our keepsakes.

A lot of what we have has enormous sentimental value. But fire doesn’t care about our sentiments.

Some of our stuff has monetary value. But fire doesn’t care about money.

When you are confronted with a force that doesn’t care about anything you do or anything you have, how do you react?

This is a leadership newsletter. So I’m going to take a quick second here to relate this to leadership without, I hope, disrespecting the people who have lost so much.

Because whether it’s a fire or a toxic work environment, when you are in a challenging situation that is causing emotional strain, you have to come to terms with what is most important to you.

You can’t move forward until you are clear on your priorities.

The Things We Carry

If you had 30 minutes to figure out the most important things in your life, what would you choose?

For me, the people I love come first. Without question.

But beyond that - in a house full of treasured things, where all you get is what you can carry - what things are the most important?

I grabbed the necessities: passports, social security cards, our marriage certificate, and titles to the cars. I took whatever money we had lying around. All of that stuff amounted to a small envelope.

I put together a few changes of clothes and grabbed my computer, phone, and charging cables. My life, as it turns out, is in the cloud.

And then I stopped and stood.

I thought of the books I love, the artwork we adore, I thought of the jewelry, and the boxes and boxes of photos we never open.

I looked at all the stuff I proudly worked so hard to create and those that were created for us.

And that’s when I realized it.

Nothing really mattered.

I had my family.
I had my health.
I had the means to move forward if everything else was destroyed.

That is all I need to live a happy and full life.

Everything else that’s truly important to me can be fit into a backpack.

How We Prioritize Life

We didn’t have to evacuate.

We are far more fortunate than the thousands of others. Don’t give me any sympathy, save it for the people that could use it.

But here’s my point in bringing all of this up: don’t wait for a catastrophe to prioritize your happiness.

I challenge you to take 15 minutes of quiet time - no work, no technology, none of your annoying death metal music playing in the background - and write a paragraph about what you want to surround yourself with in order to live your happiest life.

What are your top 3 priorities in life and why?

Is it people? Experiences?
Do you prioritize material objects?
Do you want a different job?
A different relationship?
Do you want to live in a different location?

Whatever your answer may be, whatever happiness looks like to you, it’s not wrong.

So do it. Because odds are that one day you’re going to face the fire. It may not be the burning hot kind of fire that scorches the earth and leaves lives in ruins, but it will still be a fire forcing you to face your priorities.

Make sure you know what will make you happy because the fire doesn’t care. It will take everything from you if it can.

Want to know how you can help victims of the fires? Read this