To Answer

you couldn't be more right Kitty. :/
i hate being vulnerable to people.

kitty...

i would ask you if you think that by acknowledging these things... that "precious" things can come and go and fade... if you still can have them?

or is it that because they can lack permanence that you avoid them in entirety?

i don't question your line of thought but just trying to understand you much more. i take a different approach with some aspects that are similar to what you have shared... i believe that everyone and everything may be precious at different moments in life and we should appreciate those "moments" as much as anything else.

where our sentiments converge is in the sense that time is truly fleeting.

To hold something at Great Value or Precious, has many different meanings, to so many different humans. Perhaps depending on where you live and how you were raised. Or how you have learned to accept Life, as what it really boils down to for you or I, or any other person.

I personally have pretty much lost the idea that material possessions can be considered 'precious'. BUT I have what I need, in the way of material items, I imagine I must have , to exist day to day. I have clothes on my back, shoes on my feet, a roof over my head and a vehicle for transportation. IF I got down to just one of each of these items, say one set of clothes, one pair of shoes, and a card board box for the roof over my head. Then THESE items may take on, the ideology of being 'precious' to me. For if I was not capable of replacing any of these, I would hold on to them with a mighty grasp. That is my take on how material items could ever be consider 'precious'.

But family members, even though at times we do not always get along with these people, and at times may have a tendency to greatly disagree. Upon their passing from our lives, some Memories of them can become precious. IF one is to suffer from dementia, and lose those memories, one would not die. Therefore memories are not fundamentally a precious requirement for existence. Only to be considered a treasure.

Now if I was to loose my ability for self preservation, including but not limited to, my ability to move on my own, to breath on my own, to be able to ingest food on my own...I think you can see where I am heading. That these things are very 'precious' to me. As I do not wish to ever have to depend on any machine or another person to assist me with these functions.

IF I was to lose my FREEDOM, to come and go as I please, to worship as I please, to let my voice be heard as I please, then losing these abilities would hurt me very much. As I wish NO one to tell me where to go, what to do, or what I can or can not say. So in that regard I suppose FREEDOM is a very precious commodity to me.

As I started out by saying...One person's ideology of what terms items, persons or rights as being Precious, will never be the same.

"Precious" is a moment which lifts you beyond yourself, I think. Those are my greatest memories, anyway -- when someone important to me made me feel so alive and so hopeful, time stopped. I live for those moments, I think. Precious indeed! :)