AT A MOMENT'S NOTICE

I wish this always had to do with good things. But it seems like it has more to do with emergencies. At least in my world it appears to work that way.

Of course I realize it wouldn’t be called an emergency if you had prior notice or you would probably figure a way to avoid the crisis. I’m tempted to indulge a little in the silliness here of imagining a series of memos between bureaucrats written in matter of fact manners. One’s where they would casually speak of how to deal with an impending crisis without making it look like they were dealing with a crisis. So they would insist upon a certain level of ineptness and incompetence, but provide a litany of excuses with appropriate double talk to cover the situation. Naturally no where in the discussion would they mention anything about PREVENTION!

As silly as all of that sounds, believe me there are times when from where I sit I swear that would be the way some bureaucrats would handle any crisis knew about without a moment’s notice. They would still handle it the same way. Now you may shake your head and say, “hey nobody would be that heartless or indifferent towards their fellow man!”

That’s a great sentiment. And I wish it were really the case. But sometimes I do have to wonder. I wonder if at a moment’s notice in that regard is almost something we intentionally build into situations. I know I’m probably being a little over the top with that suggestion, but perhaps it does explain why we are far better at hindsight that foresight.

Now don’t get me wrong here. I’m not suggesting we try to go to extremes the other way with making prevention some kind of panacea either. And I don’t mean any disrespect to the few prophets or visionary who do call it right about some impending disaster and manage to save our butts.

However they never get the press do they? Nope it is the cavalry that comes to the rescue isn’t it? Yep, they are the ones we treat as heroes. And the closer to almost extinction they are to actually saving someone or something the cooler it is. After all it wouldn’t be cool to be a hero if you made it look too easy. It just doesn’t have the drama that way.

What am I suggesting? Basically what I’m suggesting is that we are saps for looking good and optimizing ways to be heroic. For example, which would we regard as a better story, a fireman who saved a child from a burning building or the fire marshal who found a fire violation and got it fixed before a fire occurred? I don’t need to actually answer that do I?

As for me, well recognizing this little aspect of human nature makes me react with my own form of prevention. Essentially I face the reality that Murphy really was a prophet and that there will be a lot more at a moment’s notice than chances to fix something before it cases an emergency. Having embraced that fact I sit back, smile and dream of the best way to be a hero even when I know before hand about a problem!