WHAT MOVES YOU?

What moves you?

Sometimes our most memorable moments are of occurrences from years now past. Our memory holds on to those special moments because the moment moved us in some special way. Many of the lessons that would serve me well in the fire service were learned long before my career began.

I remember my wife being very concerned that our daughter would not crawl. My wife sought advice from anyone who would listen and she tried to stand our daughter up into a crawling position to get her started to no avail.

I tried to comfort my wife by explaining that our daughter didn’t crawl because she really had no place she wanted to go. When she cried she was picked up and fed and when she grunted a few times she received further service and care.

My memorable moment came one afternoon when I was home alone with my daughter. I had laid her on the bed and placed pillows around her for safety. My daughter was uninterested as I dropped loose change into a jug. As I removed an assortment of loose bills from my pocket, separated them and smoothed them out, she moved up onto her hands and knees and came charging across the bed to the sound of the money.

I reset this scenario for my wife that evening. First I used a toy and a special blanket which my daughter ignored and finally I took out paper money and I watched my wife’s joy as our Olympic crawler again demonstrated her skills.

In our fire service lives we should all pause, reflect and remember what it was that brought us here, what inspired us, what caused us to hunger, to want, to reach, to seek excellence, to love for our team to win, to pull up, to learn to crawl toward a goal that is much bigger than any one of us, whatever your goal may be.

It matters not to me any of the crutches and excuses that some would use to deny themselves and their team success. I could care less if your old used apparatus runs out of a small metal building in a small rural community or if you run in a big city with state of the art apparatus. It also doesn’t matter whether you are tagged as a volunteer, combination or career department. It doesn’t matter to me if your career is upside down because you chose to cry and grunt and followed the wrong crowd, your career can take a U turn if you understand that a U turn starts with you.

Do you have somewhere you want to go?

Spend more time crawling and less time crying, you’ll get there faster.

People can prop you up and encourage you but you have to start.

What moves you?

Thanks for reading and sharing.

Have a great day – it’s a GREAT day for it.