TIM MORSE: It matters, but we have to refocus priorities

As I made what is usually an easy drive from Moultrie to Albany to work on Monday, it turned into a drive that wasn’t easy to look at.

Downed power lines, homes that were uprooted from their foundations and stores where I used to stop to purchase gasoline for the drive home cut in half. Water over roads made some routes impassable.

It was bad in Colquitt County, got a little worse when I crossed into Worth County and by the time I passed Moree’s store near the county line of Worth and Dougherty Counties, it got worse still.

During Sunday’s NFC Championship Game between the Atlanta Falcons and Green Bay Packers, my power went out for most of the game. I saw little of the Falcons’ shredding of Green Bay.

I know some folks who literally got mad because the power went out during the game. It isn’t every day that we have a local sports franchise make the Super Bowl. However, I was reminded of how those things don’t matter in times like this. Southwest Georgia was hit with its second catastrophic weather event in less than a month.

I took several different roads to get to the office, driving around debris and even some downed power lines. The more I drove, the more my heart sank and I became that much more thankful. Life can be taken away from us in an instant, and some folks were worried more about a football game.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the Falcons making the Super Bowl is marvelous. I grew up watching this franchise cut my heart out on more than one occasion. I remember the franchise getting oh-so-close in 1979 only to lose to the Dallas Cowboys.

Then there were the Jerry Glanville days in the early 1990s when the Falcons teased us until they hired Americus native Dan Reeves, who took the franchise to its first Super Bowl after the 1998 season. I was a young sports writer at the time, working at The Augusta Chronicle. We sent a team of five writers to Miami to cover the Super Bowl. I just missed the cut.

I once thought sports was everything. My father once told me that someday I would refocus my priorities and would understand that there are more important things in life than a sporting event. That lesson was learned many years ago.

However, it has been reinforced a lot during the past few weeks. After the first tornado rolled through the area on Jan. 2, I saw people who lost everything.

Then Monday, I saw much of the same things I’d seen just a few weeks earlier.

On the way to work (which was especially longer than usual), I began to think about how our society puts athletes and their six- and seven-figure salaries on a pedestal. I was stopped near Mock Road by a Georgia Department of Transportation worker. While I was waiting to proceed, I asked him how long he’d been going at it.

Come to find out, he had worked throughout the night and into the morning.

These folks, not the professional athletes, are the real heroes. And I am grateful for their service and tireless commitment in trying to keep us safe and helping our lives return to normal as much as possible.

Forgive me if I feel just a little blessed today.