Fire & EMS Leader Pro The job of old firefighters is to teach young firefighters how to become old firefighters!
By: Robert Avsec, Executive Fire Officer
I write because I want people to think, especially about what they don’t know. My aim is to inform, educate, and challenge readers to encourage them to engage with new ideas. In return, I learn from their feedback.
In the summer of 1979 (yes, that long ago!), I was a minor league baseball umpire in the New York-Pennsylvania (NY-Penn) League, a short 82-game Class A league. That experience, coupled with over 15 years of umpiring college and high school baseball, taught me many things. One crucial lesson was that, even on my best day, rarely would everyone on both teams be 100% satisfied with my performance. On any given pitch I called or play I judged, 50% were going to love it, and the other 50% weren’t going to like it at all. That’s the nature of being a game official.
This experience is very similar to writing articles for the fire and EMS audience or commenting on another article or post on LinkedIn (my preferred platform for posting my work, as people generally maintain a professional demeanor). I’ve become intrigued by how “thin-skinned” some people can be in the fire and EMS world. You don’t have to name individuals for them to take offense or tell others that something I wrote offended them. Crazy, right?
Addressing Offense
For clarification, I don’t write to offend anyone. That’s never my intent. However, an individual can choose to take offense, which means they consciously decide to do so. Obviously, neither I nor any other writer can control whether someone takes offense to something we’ve written.
Read Next: The Psychology of Offense
Constructive Dialogue
I’m not talking about mere disagreement. You can disagree with anything I write, but I hope your disagreement is based on some fact I’ve omitted or gotten wrong. I also hope you’ll direct me to where I can find that fact or data—that’s what I call constructive dialogue.
The challenge for all of us is that the ability or opportunity for constructive dialogue has diminished greatly. How about we all work a bit harder at giving constructive dialogue a chance for a comeback?
Conclusion
Let’s embrace open, respectful, and fact-based conversations. Writing is my way of fostering this dialogue, and I invite you to join me in this endeavor.
