"Who's packing your parachute?"

Hope everyone's week has been great - almost Friday, yay! (Also the beginning of finals, boo..) This is a little outside of what I wanted to cover in terms of posting on this blog, but this is a little something I appreciated from my Human Resources class. From time to time, my professor hands us articles to reflect on and write a reaction paper to. Most of them are typically related to Human Resources, but he decided to throw this one in and I'm glad he did. It's about a page-long read, not long, worth it! I wanted to share this with whoever takes their time to actually read this blog.

Our Parachute

Charles Plumb was a US Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience.

One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, “You’re Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!”

“How in the world did you know that?” asked Plumb.

“I packed your parachute,” the man replied. Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man pumped his hand and said, “I guess it worked!” Plumb assured him, “It sure did. If your chute hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t be here today.”

Plumb couldn’t sleep that night, thinking about that man. Plumb says, “I kept wondering what he might have looked like in a Navy uniform: a white hat, a bib in the back, and bell-bottom trousers. I wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even said, ‘Good morning, how are you?’ or anything because, you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor.”

Plumb thought of the man hours the sailor had spent on a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute, holding in his hands each time the fate of someone he didn’t know.

Now, Plumb asks his audience, “Who’s packing your parachute?” Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day. Plumb also points out that he needed many kinds of parachutes when his plane was shot down over enemy territory – he needed his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional parachute, and his spiritual parachute. He called
on all these supports before reaching safety.

Sometimes in the daily challenges that life gives us, we miss what is really important. We may fail to say hello, please, or thank you, congratulate someone on something wonderful that has happened to them, give a compliment, or just do something nice for no reason. As you go through this week, this month, this year, recognize people who pack your parachute.

I don't mean to get really nerdy, but I'm taking a Human Resources and also an Ethics class this semester and initially, they were simply just two required courses to take until I realized I was really benefiting from this class and learning my true values. I've been consistently reminded of the important things we typically forget the most. As this semester's coming to an end, I just wanted to reflect on how much I've been challenged this semester and realizing how grateful I am to have been able to accomplish all that I've accomplished in the past few months. Count your blessings, y'all! And thank the people in your life...even for the small things.

Good luck to all college students on finals; finish strong!