It’s Day 10 of our 3rd extended fire assignment of the season. Late August. In fire, the month of August is known as “Dirty August” and it lives up to its name quite well. It’s August 30th, and for 26 of those days I have been running around the woods with a chainsaw on a fire assignment. In the few brief days that I do have off, I spend them cleaning my gear, doing laundry, and finding ways to decompress and chill out. I often try to avoid listening to the news, mostly because it’s usually bad news. Only a few weeks ago I was having a conversation with my grandfather in which we discussed the state of the world... I told him how it’s funny that I can usually find more peace in a forest that is literally burning to the ground than I can in the “real world” per se (gyms, bars, radio, television, anywhere where I can hear/see the news). When I am on my R&R days, I’ve found that it usually takes me at least 24 hours to decompress enough to allow my mind and my body to relax for the next 24 hours of my allotted 2 days of R&R before I go back on the clock, and likely back to a new fire. This is the state of wildfire, and this is not an uncommon experience within this community. It is easy to see how folks can burn out.
As I sit here and lie down for the night, after my 10th consecutive 16 hour shift, I can’t help but wonder what good I’m reeeally doing, and if it is reeeally worth it. My body is beat down, sore as hell, and ready for rest, yet sometimes my mind just can’t get to sleep. Sometimes I just can’t stop the flurry of thoughts that fly around in my head. I look up at the diamond covered canvas of night sky above me and can’t help but feel so, so small. Sometimes I think of God. Sometimes I think of home. Sometimes I just think about what I could have done better today. But that damn night sky never fails to make me feel so insignificant. And not necessarily in a bad way... it just humbles me. In its beauty I’m caught in a literal starstruck sense of awe. Sometimes I catch myself thinking and try to shake it off and get some sleep before the next workday. But not tonight. Tonight I’m gonna let the thoughts fly. Tonight, I’ll take a closer look at the sky. I’ll probably think of God and his crazy plan that he just won’t let me make sense of. I’ll think of how much I miss home, and my childhood friends. Hell I’ll even probably start thinking about the type of woman I’m gonna want to marry someday. I’ll lay here and wonder if maybe my crew members are thinking the same thoughts. Maybe. But a topic that has been weighing on my heart for some time now is feeling. Not the literal sense of touch, duh, but raw emotions. When it’s okay to hide them, feel them, show them, share them, and all that good stuff.
Taking an honest look at myself, I’m not sure that feelings or showing emotion have ever really been my strong suit. I mean obviously I have emotions and feel everything just the same as everyone else. I think maybe I’ve just learned to express them less- for a variety of reasons. In baseball at least, I learned that showing emotion was almost a sign of weakness. Allowing your opponent to get in your head and mess with your ego, confidence, or the way you played your game was a sign of mental weakness. In friendly debate throughout my years in school, becoming emotional in your argument wasn’t necessarily good for your case. In the little medical training that I do have, allowing yourself to become emotional in an adrenaline inclined situation can lead to mistakes and could ultimately have a negative impact on patient care. In fire, allowing your emotions to dictate decisions, at worst, could turn into a fatal mistake.
With this preamble set, I think it’s important to say that emotions, feeling and showing them, is extremely important as well. However, distinguishing when it is appropriate to do so can be the tricky part. Figuring that tricky part out, I think, is a key aspect to leadership as well- which can be another topic in and of itself.
Ultimately, I’ve come to realize that emotions aren’t a sign of weakness, but much the opposite. They’re a sign of strength, courage, and part of living truthfully. It’s raw and it’s real, genuine, and authentic. Authenticity these days is far overlooked and hard to come by. But I’ve always prided myself on being genuine and being authentic because it is so rare. That being said, I’m keying in to my emotions a little more lately, and learning when to share or express them. As I mentioned earlier in this post, it is easy to see how firefighters often burn out. We talk about mental fatigue and ways to go about dealing with it, and I think sharing emotions and “venting” can be beneficial, so long as it’s solution oriented. Being proactive and recognizing your own mental state, is also important. Tackling and overcoming the little obstacles as they come, and not allowing the little things to build up over the course of the season makes room to deal with whatever the day throws at you. Thus clearing your head a little more and enabling you to make better decisions and avoid “burnout.” Having been through a critical incident and going through the stress management training following that incident, it has only made this aspect of self care that much more important to me. In a world that has historically told us to suck it up and move on, we are becoming more keen to dealing with the rigors of high and prolonged stress environments. While we still suck it up and move on, we learn as much as we can along the way and strategically overcome the stress at hand. It’s new, and it’s not perfect, but it’s better than bottling up and we should practice it more often.
On the other hand, and to get back to the subject of living truthfully and authentically, I have recognized a strength of mine. One thing that I have been extremely good at in my years is my awareness of time. I have always been hyper cognizant of time, or lack-there-of. You see, I’ve had far too many experiences that remind me that my time here on this earth, or any of our time for that matter, isn’t very long at all. In the grand scheme of things we are only here for a mere instant; a blink of an eye. Knowing that, and constantly being reminded of it, has brought a sense of passion to my life that I think most people don’t get to experience, or perhaps just don’t act upon. And with passion comes emotion. I don’t really think you can live life to the fullest while also suppressing or not allowing yourself to feel and live your emotions. Yes, I do think that being *too* emotional is a real thing. I also think that being a feelingless robot is also a real thing, and arguably worse than too much emotion. That being said, finding that happy medium and that balance is something to be strived for.
Tonight, these stars are making me feel small. But they’re reminding me again that this life is short, and that there is so much out there. And that, that keeps me going. That is my reassurance. That’s my wink from the universe saying, “Hey, good job. Keep on keepin’ on. What you’re doing does matter, you are making a difference.” And I’m allowing myself to feel good for how I’m choosing to live my life. If you’ve been reading along with these blogs you might have noticed a recurring theme... In the end, I’m here to live the best fucking life I can. Big thank you to those gaseous masses for burning bright and keeping my busy mind... busy. What a juxtaposed downplay description of stars for the blog ending, eh? Cheers.
#jkl
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