
My father was the first to tell me: “Keep it simple, stupid.” I never did much like being called “stupid,” so I spent the next ten years complicating my life. His life philosophy was tried and true, and well lived. He got up, went to work when scheduled, did his job, earned raises and promotions, and left the job at work when he went home. While at home he expected obedience from his children, love from his spouse, and time to enjoy all that he earned while working. He provided me with a good life, my mother with an attentive partner, and all of us with a great leader and a comfortable existence.
Another from his pearl strand of wisdom was this; “The secret to happiness is low expectations.”
Considering he was a janitor with the phone company after the war and became a well-respected and successful engineer, I thought he might be right. Maybe. Being a child of a very good father, I took that advice as a challenge to prove him wrong. I expected the world to bend to my will, people to listen to me, relationships to flourish without complication, jobs to be well compensated, my work appreciated, and life to be grand. And it was. Kind of. Until it wasn’t.
People are people
As I began my career, it became abundantly clear that other people were bound and determined to make my life far more challenging than I would have liked. For years I did my best to change the people I was stuck with and avoid the ones that I could do without. My expectations were high: I planned to do as I pleased without anybody telling me no.
When I entered the fire service I discovered there are a whole lot of people who loved to tell me no. I didn’t like it, but knew enough to follow orders. At work, anyway. One of the most profound lessons I learned was that my father was right about low expectations. The people I worked with had the potential to create endless conflict and disappointment. They were different from me. They told me no. They ate funny foods and told unfunny jokes. They shoveled the ramp different, and talked to people in ways I didn’t understand. Some were slobs, others were neat nicks, some argued for fun while others got their feelings hurt easily and isolated.
The harder I tried to fit in, and find my place, the worse things got. It wasn’t until I was able to fully embrace the simplicity of my father’s wisdom that I was able to accept the things I couldn’t change and find peace with the people I would spend the most dramatic years of my life with.
People are people, and we are all wired differently. We all have our own way of getting through our lives. Low expectations had nothing to do with diminished grandiosity; rather it was just a simple way to accept people as they came. Keeping it simple accomplished that.
Firefighters are people. People are different, but fairly simple. With all of our complexities, life experiences, education, influences, and expectations, we exhibit the same five characteristics:
The Five Firehouse Personalities
1. The Quiet One:
Does the job. Doesn’t say much.
2. The Not-So-Quiet One:
Does the job. Talks a lot.
3. The Funny One:
Does the job. Makes people laugh.
4. The Cranky One:
Does the job. Complains a lot.
5. The Useless One:
Didn’t do the job. Works somewhere else.
Some days, the quiet one says something funny, the funny one is cranky, the cranky one goes quiet and the not so quiet one goes silent. Other days, everybody is funny. Or cranky. Or silent. Most days we are all a little of each. But we all make the best of the experience we all dreamed of, trained for, stayed in shape for, and showed up for.
Ours is like no other vocation. Everything changes at the sound of a tone. All the firehouse personalities get put away. One simple entity emerges: the crew. When there is a job, the crew assembles and gets the job done. There can be no other way. It is in the heat of battle that our true selves emerge.
We are not given the honor to ride the trucks and answer the calls for help. We earned the right to be the people responding. It really is quite simple. The people who drive you nuts one minute are the ones who have your back the next. The person complaining about your avocado salad half an hour ago is the one operating the pump while you are in deep, doing the job. Your partner may have been sulking around the station all morning but started the impossible IV that led to a great outcome of a horrible situation.
Complicating a job by expecting everything to go smoothly between calls, and demanding respect from people who are doing their best to be respectful, results in disappointment. But remember, being disappointed is an emotion you bring on yourself; it’s not created by those around you. People are people; each and every one of them has earned their place their own way. (Note: None of us are ‘The Useless One.’ Those folks have a place, but the fire service definitely is not it.)
The greatest job in the world didn’t just happen. It was created by the people doing the job. If firefighting was nothing but constantly fighting fires and doing rescues nobody would last. The time between is essential. Making the time between as harmonious as possible by keeping it simple, fun, and productive creates the magic that allows us to put the baggage of tragedy in other people’s lives away and get on with things.
Together.
Bio:
Michael Morse is a retired Captain with The Providence, RI Fire Department. The author of Rescuing Providence and other books, as well as numerous articles about the fire service, EMS, and life in general lives in Warwick, RI.