A couple weeks ago was my 8th annual attendance of the Peace Officer’s Memorial. Well, possibly it could be counted as my 9th if you count the time 9 years ago when I didn’t know there was a memorial and just heard shots near my office and walked towards them. I now know it was a 21 gun salute, but still….I heard shots, and I walked towards them. If I was moth, I’d have flown into the first flame I encountered.
Like a lot of people, I’ve always held in high esteem the folks that put themselves in harm’s way to protect others. But the more I came to know cops as real humans, it’s meant even more.
Obviously, they’re cut from a special cloth. They see a whole other world that we’d like to think doesn’t exist. But also, they’re people. Bona fide humans who are sworn to protect us (even if they haven’t grown up enough to know the importance of using a coaster.)
The keynote speaker focused on sacrifice as a theme and offered the following definition; sacrifice is the act of giving up something highly valued for the sake of something considered to have a greater value.
I cried. Like instantly. I also promptly told the social workers around me that they couldn’t cry too. There are few things that would reinforce the stereotype about our jobs more than us all standing around crying.
I’m sure the rest of the speaker’s words were equally moving, but I was stuck.
Obviously, the speech was about loss of life to law enforcement, but the speech also made me think of the other sacrifices. The more quiet sacrifices that people make every single time they forgo something that is important to them for the greater good.
There’s a painful beauty to think of it.
Maybe I thought of the speech in a less fatal sense because I don’t want to think of anything bad ever happening to my baby boy who chose to be a cop because it would look cool. Or maybe I’m going through a phase.
It can be easy to give up things for reasons that are big or small. But the added note of it must be something “highly valued” changes everything.
People who make those decisions everyday far exceed goals of “being a good man or woman.” They’re honorable in their commitment to do the right thing. Those quiet decisions far more than compensate for the slips and falls that happen over the long haul. They’ll humbly think things like “all I can do is try” which can discredit the fact that trying is everything.
As memorials should be, it was memorable. I’m thankful for so much about it but especially grateful for the reminders about sacrifice. Maybe even right now someone is making doing something that is hard or even dumb because it’s the right thing to do. There’s not going to be a ceremony with bagpipes for all the tough things that people do every day, but that doesn’t make them any less noble.
Thank you all for your quiet inspirations to others. And thanks for not having more 21 gun salutes that I’d just wander to (*eyeroll).
Thanks for reading!
Bifocals and Barbells 