Meme: Passion Quilt

If I had but one message I could pass on to my students and my child, what would it be? What lessons am I most passionate about?

Would it be to always remember the ABCs; Airway, Breathing and Circulation? Or Ambulate Before Carry?

Would it be a particularly nifty piece of airway management kung fu?

Would it be some useful tidbit of drug arcania?

Perhaps it would it be one of my homespun homilies, such as "You're learning to be mechanics on the human body. Strive to understand how that particular mechanism works, rather than be satisfied to be the medical equivalent of the pimply-faced kid standing behind the parts counter at Autozone."

Or perhaps I'd crib lines from Ben Carlson: "Don't sweat the small stuff…and it's all small stuff."

If I'm teaching pediatrics, it might be, "The best way to establish a rapport with a child is to be a child yourself."

Or I might choose one of my more frequently used admonitions: "Never stop questioning. Half of what I learned in school turned out to be bullshit. Half of what I'm teaching you today will prove to be bullshit ten years from now. Don't be satisfied with memorizing what I'm teaching you; question all of it so that your future consists of something more than repeating the mistakes of your predecessors."

I might remind my students that if you scratch a doctor, you'll always find a frustrated teacher just below the surface, and to use that to their advantage.

What brings me to these ruminations, you ask? Well Cranky Professor tagged me with a meme, the rules of which can be summed up thusly:

Post a picture or make/take/create your own that captures what YOU are most passionate for students to learn about.

Give your picture a short title.

Title your blog post "Meme: Passion Quilt."

Link back to this blog entry.

Include links to 5 (or more) educators.

If I were faced with giving my last lecture, what would it be? Would I be as inspirational as Randy Pausch? What on Earth would I say that I don't routinely say in a hundred other mundane lectures?

Well, I'd say this:

Discover your gifts, and honor them.

I think the noted philosopher Ben Parker said it best when he told his nephew, "With great power comes great responsibility."

I thought Uncle Ben had said it first, but then I realized he had cribbed the lines from the Luke 12:48:

"…For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more."

Now, perhaps the kid in the picture has yet to discover his gifts, or perhaps none of them involve reading signs.

I don't mean to get all religious here, but I firmly believe that each one of us is endowed with certain gifts. They may be great, shining talents…or they may be small and seemingly insignificant, even to those who possess them. But to at least some in the world, those gifts are the greatest treasure one could hope to find.

Find yours, and honor them.

How dreary a life must be to have never discovered what you and you alone can offer to the world. How unsatisfying to die knowing that on the tapestry of human existence, you never contributed your own unique stitch.

Find your gifts, and honor them.

One of my best friends was an EMT I trained. I taught his First Responder course. I taught his EMT-Basic course. I taught his EMT-Intermediate course, and he topped out there. He'll never be a paramedic.

Before he got into EMS, he was a bull rider.

That wasn't his gift.

He managed a veal barn for several years.

That wasn't his gift either.

He was a soldier in the Army National Guard.

He served honorably, but that wasn't his gift.

I knew halfway through his First Responder class that he wasn't going to set the world on fire as a student. He struggled to pass every test, but he never gave up.

Memorizing and regurgitating emergency medical trivia wasn't his gift either.

On the first day of his EMT class, I told the students that if they gave me their best, then I'd return the favor. I told them that if they dared insult me or their future patients by giving less than their best, then I'd do my best to see to it that they didn't finish. He took the challenge personally.

And in taking up that challenge, he discovered his gifts. He may not be the deepest thinker around, but in a world where common sense is increasingly uncommon, he was blessed with an abundance of it. If smart brains were high performance sports cars, his would be the old tractor on the shoulder of the road, chugging along in granny gear.

But just like granny gear, you'd never bog him down.

In a profession where we see people at their worst, he never saw someone as their diagnosis instead of their name. He could hold a tender conversation with the old lady lying on the floor with a broken hip, and never give a hint that he noticed the smell of urine and feces on her clothes. He never met a stranger, and people naturally trusted him. When the scene was chaotic, he was calm. He was generous with his time, his money, and his spirit.

In his words, "I'm just an old rodeo whore. As long as I've got a dollar, you'll have fifty cents if you need it."

Those were his gifts, and he kept looking until he discovered what they were. Or perhaps he had always known, and in EMS he found a means to honor them. It doesn't really matter.

When people finally recognized what a talented EMT he was, when he stood on the dais and accepted his award as National EMT of the Year, it wasn't an accolade he had sought. The $1000 gift certificate to Bass Pro Shops meant more to him than the plaque and the magazine write up. He didn't much care if anyone else saw him as gifted.

He saw it, and that was enough. His words on the dais were testament to that:

"I feel like I'm the luckiest man on this Earth. I've found what God put me on this Earth to do. For that I'm thankful."

He discovered his gifts, and honored them. I didn't endow him with them. If I contributed anything at all, it was to give him the tools to honor them properly.

And you see, that's my gift. I've got a talent for seeing potential. I could do it with dogs, and I can do it with people. In some people, the potential to excel, or even succeed, as an EMT is not there. I gently help those people understand that failure doesn't mean that they have no gifts, only that they have undiscovered ones suited for pursuits other than medical care. And sometimes, I plant a foot in their ass because I see their gifts, and it pisses me off that they refuse to honor them.

I'm a lucky man in that God has blessed me with a number of gifts. I say lucky because I can't take credit for them. I did nothing to earn them. All I can do is nurture them.

I master skills rather easily. I honor that gift by teaching those skills to others, and showing patience when they struggle.

My brain is able to process and store new information very easily. I retain things. I pass that information on to my students, because to honor knowledge is to pass it on freely. To hoard it makes it a secret, and secrets are valuable only to the person keeping them.

I have a talent for distilling complex subjects into easily understood terms. Perhaps it's simply a gift for effective communication, but I honor it by packaging it for people like my old partner, who never understood twenty-five dollar words.

I have a gift for making people laugh. Sometimes I have a gift for making people cry. When I'm at my best, teaching is less a lecture than it is a performance, and everyone knows that learning is best accomplished between fits of tears or laughter. And so your laughter or tears is the best honor I can imagine.

I have a gift, however small, for words. It's one I discovered late in life, and one I'm still learning how to use. I try to honor it in whatever I write, including this blog.

I have been gifted with a perfectly imperfect child who has taught me the meaning of courage and resilience. I honor that gift by being the best father I can, and by helping her discover her own gifts. I try to help her understand that although God gave her two limbs that work poorly, His gift was the indomitable spirit that will help her discover more about life than she ever thought possible.

I have been gifted by the love of a beautiful woman. I honor that by honoring her. I don't always succeed at it, but I try every day to be worthy of her. If that makes me a better man, then the circle is completed. She gifts me with her love, and in return I become a better companion, lover and friend. I think that's what God intends when he brings two people together.

So if I had to pass along one last bit of advice, confer one last bit of insight to my students and my child that would serve them beyond the borders of a classroom or an ambulance cab, I'd tell them to challenge themselves, because that's the only way they'll discover their true gifts. And once discovered, spend their lives honoring them.

Have you discovered and honored yours?

I tag:

Don Gwinn

Mrs. Who

Chas Clifton

Nancy

Tall Cool Drink of Water