Who will be the first responders?

As with any adversity throughout history, you as a Chiropractor can’t help but be concerned with your own needs. Your ability to help others, your financial needs, and security. It’s only normal, in our superficial and “what’s in it for me’ world. But this is only the first step. If this was illustrated as a ladder, you would be on the bottom rung only. To achieve a transition in perspective, higher rungs on the ladder must be climbed.

With a transition in perspective, it becomes all about your practice members. Their needs, suffering, trauma, and terror. As a result, something magical happens. You, your practice members, and the world transcends through the adversity and is forever changed because of it. There is a strength and resiliency that wasn’t there before that will last forever. These hidden lessons in adversity remain hidden many times.

A transition in perspective is achieved when people are placed before profit or personal concern.

Our profession is much more deeper and profound than pain relief only. The word that comes to mind is miracle, and you wouldn’t be wrong saying it. Through adversity there is unification. Not through isolation but collectively as a community of helping people will emerge. These people can be counted on.

An example is 9/11 and the first responders. It wasn’t just one firefighter, it was all firefighters and police officers. Nobody looks at a firefighter or police officer the same way post 9/11. Did they know they may have been inhaling carcinogens that would claim their lives in the future? Did they know they would lose their lives being in service to others? It didn’t matter to them. They were all first responders whose only concern was saving lives. They put all their reservations away to truly serve people. This is so rare in our society. An adversity has to be of epic proportions to see this kind of behavior emerge on such a large scale. This is not only a lesson for our country but for the entire world.

Many historians point to the pandemic of 1918 as the turning point with licensing of Chiropractors. Because of the heroic, selfless, and life-saving care DCs provided while staring down the end of a shotgun called the plague. It included all DCs, even the ones who sat on the sidelines. Not only did many caring for infected or potentially infected people not have a license, thereby risking jail time, they also exposed themselves to the plague. By making it all about their practice members, people opened their hearts to a new idea of health through Chiropractic.

DCs who live lives of service on the higher rungs of humanity and make it all about their practice members know the feeling of not being able to eat in any restaurant in town without one of your grateful practice members sending a bottle of wine to your table, picking up your check, or coming to your table to thank you for their miracle. Individually, and collectively as a profession, we must climb to higher rungs if we are to transition the perspective of Chiropractic.