They are the lucky ones, Wang Jhijun and his wife Li–they survived China’s earthquake after 28 hours of being buried together in the rubble.  Breathing had become harder as the hours dragged past.  Their bodies had gone numb.  Wang wanted to give up at one point and tried to kill himself by twisting his neck against the sharp edges of the debris.  Cold rain soaked them to the bone, as they lay there, their arms around each other.

Li sensed that her husband was giving up.  “We’re still alive.  We must be fated to live,” she told him.  They whispered to each other, speaking of their 14-year-old daughter–if they died, who would care for her?  They remembered moments of their life together.  They thought about the changes they would make if they made it out alive.

They lay there recovering in the hospital, in separate beds, Wang covered with bloody, pus-filled cuts, but no serious injuries.  Li had tears in her eyes–she had lost her left arm, after pleading with the doctor not to amputate it.  But gangrene had set in, and there was no recourse.  Still, they both were thankful.

Wang and Li did not have a “good marriage” by any standard.  He had just returned home two days before the quake, after having traveled around the country for 6 months trying his hand at various small businesses.  He had lost a lot of money.  He and his wife hardly ever spoke.  Ms. Li was raising the daughter pretty much on her own, while working in a chemical factory.  “My husband doesn’t have a stable life,” she said.

The quake changed everything for the couple, though.  Their daughter was unhurt and refuses to leave their side at the hospital.  Wang and Li have rekindled their love.  “The only thing we had was each other,” Wang said.  “We encouraged each other to live on . . . we said once we got out, we’d live a good life and care for each other.  Now we have a new start.”

How is it that we take for granted what is most precious to us?  How is it that we give ourselves to the peripheral and ignore the center, the heart of it all?  Sometimes it takes an earthquake of some sort–something that shakes us to the core–before we wake up.  It needn’t be that way.  If we had a mind to, we could learn from Wang and Li.