Do You Care?
Frank Borelli
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
If you do is it good or bad?
In a previous blog titled “Letting Go” I discussed the situation wherein someone spends a significant amount of time and energy at a job trying to not only do their job but also affect positive change and how, when they leave that job, they have a hard time letting go. As I type this time I have to discuss a different situation: Caring too much about the job you are currently in.
Now don’t get me wrong, I happen to believe that if you’re going to be good at your job you need to bring both passion and compassion to it. For the sake of argument let’s define them:
Passion: a strong enthusiasm for anything
Compassion: a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.
For every law enforcement professional who really feels “the calling” to the work, passion and compassion are no strangers. That said, being passionate and compassionate can also cause you some grief. Why? Because all too often things at work - especially in law enforcement - don’t go the way we’d like to see them go. If we care about what we do and things don’t go as we’d like to see them go, then we’re as disappointed by it at work as we would be at home.
Just recently it’s been brought to my attention that the same circumstances exist in other jobs as well. In retail especially it gets easy for employees who care too much to get stressed about not getting the job done properly or within the time allowed. What happens when their end of shift rolls around and their job for the day is incomplete? If they care they’ll be motivated to stick around and see the work through. But if no overtime is available then they’ll punch out at end of shift and go home. Since they care about their job performance that very act will stress them out.
So, whether it’s in the civilian world or in our world of motivated law enforcement, it’s clear that it is possible to care too much about the work you do. When things don’t go the way you want to see them go it can affect your health and your home life. Why your home life? Because your family will ultimately see and have to deal with the impact of your own passion / compassion when you feel unfulfilled.
What can we do? Learn to deal with it. It’s fantastic if you can learn to turn off your concern when circumstances let you down. It’s fantastic if you can recognize the fact that your own health and your home life are far more important than what does or doesn’t happen on the street. Provided you go home at the end of your shift to hug your wife (or husband) and kiss your kids as they lay asleep in their beds, then the true priorities of your life are intact.
THAT is the reality we must recognize, accept and appreciate. Care and concern are good things. Passion and compassion are good things. Letting your enthusiasm for your work overwhelm other segments of your life should be avoided as much as possible.
What do you think?
I agree somewhat to this, but law enforcement requires you to have these as high priority as there are others depending on you, more than working in retail. You are held to a higher standard, so it isn’t only a personal standard.
Does Law Enforcement require you to have these as high priority? Really? Yes, a high ethical and moral standard is expected, but Joe Public truly does not have the expectation that we should be sacrificing our mental health,physical health, family, happiness and independent lives. That standard is self-imposed, or imposed by the culture of our profession or our individual organization. We certainly are not compensated, rewarded or recognized to a level where we are expected to sacrifice ourselves (either mentally or physically). We ARE expected to face danger, but intelligently, tactically and as safely as possible….the same should apply to our mental well-being!