Editor’s note: Chief Adam K. Thiel turns to poet Kipling as an inspiration to keep cool when others are losing theirs.
Thanks to one of my supervisors a few years ago, there’s a great poem by Rudyard Kipling that I always carry along with me now. It’s titled “If.”
The poem begins: “If you can keep your head when all about you. Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.”
And one of its closing lines is: “Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it.”
The point, of course, is that we — as firefighters and EMS providers — are always supposed to be calm, composed and professional. This is especially true when others (those we serve) are not.
Enough said.