You say Tomato. I say Tomahto
You say Critical. I say Critical.
Stop right there. This isn’t about how we pronounce a word. This is about how we define a word.
This is critical
Let’s Define Critical.
I have a friend who works in a hospital. Critical for him is the rush to the Emergency Room at Florida’s Santa Rosa County Hospital.
There is no denying that a critical situation occurs when someone has had a heart attack. For that person, timing is critical for hospital employees to save this person’s life.
It is a critical situation when someone who has been rushed to the ER for a stroke. Timing is critical to help that person within minutes so that the stroke does not have long lasting negative effects in the person’s life.
A critical situation occurs when
- hospice has been brought in to help a terminally ill patient. A critical situation occurs when two cars hit head on.
- a child is brought into the ER fighting for his life because of an asthma attack.
- one person ignores his responsibility in driving and swerves left of center as he looks down for a brief few seconds.
I don’t think there is anyone who would believe that these examples are not exemplar moments in time to show a definition of critical, not only in a medical personnel’s life but also in the life of a patient facing any of these medical examples.
So Let’s Define Critical Again.
I talked with a gentleman who works in the trades in Santa Rosa County, Florida. His company is an electric company and like any other business, sometimes the assignments are consistently available and the men go to work staying busy, finishing jobs, and producing a steady income for the company and themselves.
Other times, he says they are so busy that the men are working longer hours during the week and occasionally working into the weekends.
And then there are the times that the economy plummets, the work dries up, the men voluntarily take off one day a week without pay, and lose eight hours of pay each week.
The worst case scenario
- Companies face tough decisions and they lay off a percentage of their workforce.
- Laid-off workers are held in limbo, waiting for the call back to work.
- Workers wait for a pay check to keep their finances stable.
- Families need money for electric bills and house mortgages.
- This is money these working men do not have.
- This is money that had to go toward groceries for their children.
- This is money that is critical to their lives and they do not have that money.
And then, even with lay-offs that management and business owners have chosen for their companies, their decisions have been to no avail. They face closing their doors. Their company is in critical financial straits.
The definition of critical
It doesn’t just show up in a dictionary and define one element of life.
It doesn’t just show up in one’s opinion of what is happening in a hospital.
It doesn’t just show up in another person’s opinion of what is occurring in the business world.
I maintain that the definition of critical is defined by the heart
I think of an artist who has broken her hand in an accident and she is told she will not be able to paint again. She knows her hand is necessary for producing a beautiful canvas. Her passion for art will suffer if she cannot produce a piece of art. She is facing a critical time.
Is what the artist facing to keep her love of producing art not as critical because it doesn’t include a loss of life?
And think of a farmer who faces bad weather where his crops have been ruined and he cannot make that payment on his land in a few months because his cotton crop was his guarantee that he would have money. Financially, that money is critical to the farmer to keep his livelihood and his home. In his heart, keeping his land is critical.
Is what the farmer is facing not as critical so therefore less worthy than the person’s rush to the hospital?
I think that sometimes we discount what is critical because it does not fit into a neat and tidy box.
Or perhaps we discount what is critical because our own opinions have biased us into discounting someone else’s critical issues.
I could come up with probably a dozen more reasons why we don’t always recognize critical, but that in itself has become a lesson for us on the Board of Directors for DUO Santa Rosa.
The clearest example that I can give at this time is when a Principal at Pace High School approved the purchase of a phone charger for a student’s car. I remember that Board of Director’s meeting in July when our President told us that she would have to talk to the Principal as this was considered a frivolous expenditure of DUO’s money. DUO is a non-profit organization that functions in Santa Rosa County, Florida, with the mission of helping students/children who face a critical need.
We agreed. There was no way that such an expense would fit even our broad definition of critical.
We left that meeting feeling as if we had done a fair job evaluating the many Principals’ expenditure ledgers, and we were ready for our next meeting to draw up an adjusted list for the following school year.
But when we met in August, we learned that we did not understand the definition of critical. We had not understood that purchase of the car phone charger.
Our DUO President told us the Principal’s story…
“Ms. Sanborn, I know that a car phone charger seems frivolous, but I assure you I would not violate your trust in me and I certainly do not want you to think I do not value the DUO program.”
We all agreed that his words sounded sincere and certainly words that we wanted to hear. But we still didn’t see how the purchase of that car phone charger was critical.
Some of us voiced that concern and Linda nodded her head in agreement.
She said those words back to the Principal…
“I appreciate that you value the program, but that is exactly why I am speaking to you. We cannot have people thinking that the money they donate would go to such a frivolous expense.”
He responded..
“Oh, but it wasn’t frivolous, Mrs. Sanborn. It was critical.”
Linda replied…
“Okay, explain that to me.”
He responded…
“The girl and her mother are living out of the mother’s car. Since they are homeless, our student has no way to access her grades or her assignments at night when she is ready to do her homework. This is a recent issue, and the girl is in line to receive possible scholarship money once she graduates next year.”
Linda paused speaking to us and then continued…
“He said that the school was in the process of helping her mother get assistance and they are hoping to be in an apartment by the beginning of this upcoming school year. He said that the last two months of her junior year they had been homeless and the girl definitely knew her grades would be important to turn their situation around in several years.”
A seventeen-year-old girl was looking beyond her critical situation and planning a way to change that situation, even if it took several years to change.
Who am I to say what the definition of critical is for anyone?
The Board of Directors of DUO Santa Rosa and the Principals and school staff of all the county public schools in Santa Rosa County, Florida, have learned that the definition of critical is ever changing.
It is impossible for us to know in black and white definitions what is critical in a situation for a child.
But we do know that the definition is one of flux.
I don’t get to define what is critical.
The Principals of our Santa Rosa County Schools don’t get to define what is critical.
The definition of critical comes from our students and our students’ situations.
It is a definition that comes more from the heart than our minds.
But it’s not bad that the definition comes from the heart.