Balancing Act (2011)

One of life’s greatest needs is balance. Without it, we stumble, we fall, we fail in many endeavors. We cannot function, we will let others down, and in the end, we will hurt ourselves. Physically speaking, balance is what allows us to stand up-right; to walk, run, climb ladders, search buildings and find our way out. It is our equilibrium and when it isn’t working, we suffer greatly. Anyone who has experienced vertigo or even motion sickness can relate. Lacking balance is more than just being clumsy, it can be down right miserable.
But what about the balance of life? I’m referring to the balancing act everyone of us performs daily. We juggle families, work, happiness, stress, etc. When we loose balance in our lives, bad things can, and often do, happen. The consequences vary from just having a “nothing went right” sorta day, to loosing the things most important to us.
Balance is something I start coaching and teaching from day one with my new people. Balance is not easy. For a new, aspiring fire fighter, especially in the volunteer service, balance can be near impossible to maintain.  I don’t mean to single out volunteers or say that balance isn’t an issue with the career service because it is, just in a different way. Volunteers are in a unique situation; giving as much time as they can to an organization that often times is willing to take as much as what is given, all the while maintaining a “pay the bills” job(s). Put that way, it’s easy to see where burn-out comes from.
As senior fire fighters and officers, we have to teach and set the example to newer members; balance means maintaining focus on family needs and putting the “at home” family before the fire family. It’s OK to miss a call because you’re reading to your kids at night. You should skip training to attend your brother’s graduation. One of my most important jobs is to force and teach balance; force it by sending the fire fighter home from training when he or she shows up a little under the weather; teach it by providing good examples and giving praise for “family first” attitudes.
It is too easy to loose the balance between our two families; fire and family. Everyone reading this that has a family knows what I’m talking about. Everyone of us has had to validate the missing of a family event. I’m not saying that we should never run out on our family to respond to an emergency. I am saying we need to use our experience and maturity (and dare I say Common Sense) to form a decision: go or no-go. I have found including my spouse in the decision process helps. I try to discuss “what-if’s” before an event so then I know her view point and can take it into consideration. It’s basically a form of risk-management: the more variables and information I know, the better decision I’ll be likely to make.
I spent the first five or more years of my marriage fighting for balance (Yeah, the learning curve thing…). I was giving way too much to the organization, putting fire first more times than not. Think about that: the most important things in my life, my wife and children, and I was regularly putting them down the list, under fire fighting. I even had a retiring fire fighter pull me aside and tell me that what he saw wasn’t good: he had lost a family doing the same things I was doing. Did I listen? Not at first… but eventually I did.
I started looking at other areas of my life that weren’t as I wanted them. Slowly, the pieces started to fit together: I was dizzy, unbalanced, clumsy. I was full throttle in fire fighting, but my work wasn’t up to par and I was constantly behind. My family life was stressed.
I began to back down from the fire service, slowly weaning myself. Once I did this, other things in my life started to fall back into place. I was regaining my balance.




Today, life is good. Balance is not automatic and I find myself having to “re-calibrate” so to speak, but now I recognize when the scales start to tip one way or another. I have found ways to push the scale back to balance when they tip. And, it’s OK to take a break from fire fighting once in a while. Even this blog can cause the scales to tip in an un-wanted direction. As with most things in life, moderation is the key. Anytime we do things to an extreme, we risk tipping the scales, and when the scales tip, sometimes when we get them back, something very important is missing.