Editor's Note: The Mission Never Clocks Out

I gave a speech yesterday.

It was at my wife’s retirement ceremony. She has been a special education teacher for the past 26 years.

I had so much I wanted to say in that speech, but when I got to the mic, after 15 different people had showered her with well-deserved praise and love, I just looked up and told an elementary school cafeteria full of teachers a simple thank you. I got choked up and told them they were tears of joy.

What I wanted to explain but couldn’t is that I have always encouraged her to work...less. To leave her job within the walls of that building at the end of the day and come home clean. But let’s be real, that was impossible. Pretty much every weekend, she was at the kitchen table creating lesson plans and IEPs; on hard days, she was working late, dealing with behavioral issues or angry parents or county evaluations. She would do anything for those kids, but one thing she could never do was leave it outside our front door before she came home. 

As a guy with a desk job, I have always had the luxury of being able to leave work, for the most part, safely at my desk until I arrived there on the next day. Even in the pressure-packed world of deadlines, that has been pretty easy for me.

It is also easy to see that, as a group, security folks have much more in common with teachers than they do with journalists. For security integrators and executives, the job isn't just what you do…it's who you are. The mission of keeping people safe doesn't clock out, so neither do you. When you have the safety of people as your primary mission, how can you not take that job home with you to the dinner table? How can it not keep you up at night?

In all honesty, I tried to tackle a greater question with this column when I first wrote it. This all led to self-reflection on my own personal identity as a professional…but that is a column for another day. What I have here is a personal moment that brought home a point that, as an outside observer of much of what happens in the security industry, is something I may tend to overlook: I see you.

As someone who has lived with a person who is simply not able to leave work outside the door, I see how much you carry – whether at your desk or sitting at home. I’ve seen it up close for the better part of 26 years.

That’s why I got choked up at that mic. I saw my wife surrounded by her peers, I was remembering all that she carried, and I knew she was finally going to get a real day off. It was overwhelming.

So, no real professional takeaway, other than I see you and I appreciate you. We can talk about all that professional self-reflection next time.