This is personal. But just about everything in Western Samoa is. Everyone there (population 220,000) knows everyone else and the people are warm and generous.

Western Samoa also is known as Samoa or the Independent State of Samoa.

Even when you step off the plane, the breeze gives you a gentle kiss, a welcome. Robert Louis Stevenson loved Samoa so much that he spent his last years in his home on the hill overlooking Apia. Here is where he wrote “Treasure Island” and died.

I visited Samoa a few years ago with a friend after a stint as a global volunteer in the Cook Islands. Samoa was not easy to get to. In fact, we had to fly to Fiji, then backtrack to Samoa, getting whipsawed by the international date line. It was worth it.

We high-tailed it to Aggie Grey’s Hotel in Apia, arguably the most famous hotel in the South Pacific (eat your heart out, Somerset Maughan). Its spacious gardens, lush with flowers, surround pools, verandas and fales (upscale Samoan bungalows) named after such guests as Gary Cooper, Marlon Brando and James Michener.

Cooper made one of his last movies in Samoa, “Return to Paradise.” A beach on the South Coast — an unspoiled spot of beauty with respected surf — is named Return to Paradise Beach where the movie was filmed.

Aggie Grey, who lived to her 90s, was famous across the waters. She is said to be the model for Michener’s Bloody Mary. Surely she was.

When you finally have the strength to leave Aggie’s, you drive “over the hill” to the less-populated South Coast, laced with villages, churches, enclaves of fales, the pristine Taufua Beach, Sopo’Aga Falls and Gorge — an extravagance of green, and two major resorts — not big Maui-type resorts, but small and intimate: Coconuts Beach and the Sinalei Reef.

Our time on this coast was a treasure, and making it more so was the friendship of Joe and Tui Annandale, who built the Sinalei Reef Resort with great taste and love. Tui was a former Miss Samoa.

Exploring, swimming, snorkeling, walking the villages, enjoying the people and listening to stories easily filled the days. One story is that of a prince and lover who for some reason was beheaded. His head became a coconut. Now I can’t look at a coconut without seeing his eyes and mouth.

So why is any of this important? First of all, the beauty of the South Coast and its people existed and graced our Earth. Secondly, most of it has been destroyed. On Sept. 30, 2009, at 6:48 a.m., an 8.3 earthquake and tsunami struck the coast, killing more than 110 people and injuring many more.

There was a warning, but it happened too quickly. People had about 10 minutes to escape and the nearest hills were too far away. One survivor said the earth hadn’t stopped shaking before the first wave struck.

In trying to save others, Joe and Tui Annandale were hit by a wave in their UTE. Tui was swept to her death, her body later found in a tree, and Joe was critically injured. Their beloved Sinalei Reef Resort was leveled. No village survived.

Taufau Beach was buried deep in rubble from nearby villages and fales. Devastation was everywhere. On the north side of Upolo, Apia was spared the tsunami but is recovering from earthquake damage.

So while our media was focused on the Letterman scandal, the Gosselin divorce and who’s dancing with the stars, people in Samoa were coping with what was left of their lives. How everything can end so quickly, like the three young Dickinson State women who drove into a stock pond and soldiers who were shot out of the blue at Fort Hood.

It’s the season — or any season for that matter — to give thanks for every minute we have.