Built Over Time and Gone in a Flash - Treasure These if You Have Them!

A woman looks shocked at scared while staring at her computer screen with her hands on her cheeks.Photo byfizkes via Shutterstock

Nothing worth having comes easy. It can take years to cultivate a good thing, but unfortunately, the opposite is rarely true. We can lose things we spend decades building in one swift moment.

Hard To Get, Easy To Lose

One Reddit community user asked the internet to share things that are tough to secure but easy to lose instantly.

Here are some of the top responses. Treasure these things if you have them!

Trust

Trust is earned. It can take years to gain someone's confidence, and one wrong move can destroy the entire foundation.

Treat someone’s trust with the respect it deserves.

Money

It takes money to make money. And time, investment smarts, and perseverance. But it’s all too easy to spend all your precious earnings.

The rising cost of living, surviving amidst a job loss, and a sudden illness can all wipe out your savings.

A Routine

They say it takes 30 days to build a habit. Turning a routine into a way of life takes a ton of hard work and dedication, and one or two bad days can have you restart from scratch.

It may be tempting to skip the gym today, but one skipped day will lead to a skipped week and then a skipped month, and the next thing you know, you’ll have to rebuild your entire routine from the beginning.

Respect

You can spend a lifetime earning people's respect, but can destroy it in an instant with one false move. Cancel Culture is a great example.

A Healthy Weight

It takes months of exercise and healthy eating to lose a pound, but you can just look at a brownie and gain five. Keeping weight off is a massive struggle for a lot of people.

Reputation

Many people spend their entire lives cultivating an image of themselves, only to see it all come crashing down with one ill-placed social media post.

Sobriety

Addiction is tough. Addicts struggle with sobriety for years, and when they finally get clean, just one tiny taste of their poison can thrust them back into an endless spiral of despair.

Civil Rights

We thought the battle for civil rights was won. It was hard fought for decades, and we were finally nearing a point where everyone, at least in theory, had equal protection under the Constitution.

Recent events show us how fragile our rights really are.

In one fell swoop, 50% of the population lost their right to bodily autonomy. Other rights are on the chopping block, subject to the whims of a few elected and appointed officials.

Health

We can do everything right and spend our entire lives eating healthy, working out, and caring for our bodies. None of that matters if we contract random cancer or get in an accident.

The healthy life we cultivated can be gone in a second, leaving us to navigate a debilitating illness or injury.

Friendships

It takes a long time to earn a trusted friend. One mistake can crash it all down, but usually friendships decline slowly.

Enjoy Your Friendships While You Have Them

Sometimes friendships end because we don't nurture them. Avoid that by doing new and interesting things with your posse!

Here are 101 fun things to do with your friends.

This article was produced and syndicated by Partners in Fire.