Chaos

I love the word chaos. I love the idea of it, the total lack of control or order - or more accurately any that we, as humans, recognise. The sleet that flies horizontally into your face as you battle up a mountain is in perfect order with itself, with the weather patterns that generated it weeks and months before, but to us...it came out of nowhere.

I was told that the goal of a paramedic is to get "The right response to the right person in the right timeframe, with the right decisions made in initial care... and do it better next time." That's perfection. But its a goal, not the standard. Perfection stops when the tyre blows, or the rush hour jam holds up the MICA, or the patient just...dies. In each second here there's a choice, made on the best way to reverse or delay entropy until more resources can be brought to bear, and each choice has its own pro's and con, there is rarely a perfect decision; just one that works well enough to keep the patient alive long enough to get them to the ER. And being strong, having experience, sound judgement, knowing when to relax and when to tense, when to act and when to wait - all help a little, all help to exercise control over a situation. So when the sleet is barrelling into your face, you can dispassionately way up the pros and cons of each choice and pick one. You can't control the rain, but your own actions will determine how it affects you, and then it's just part of the scenery. I don't think its possible to fully understand and predict the chaos of the world, but I'd like to be able to get my abilities to a point where I feel comfortable in chaos. An eye in the storm.