Robbie-May wrote to me, concerning the fire-fighter analogy, and pointed out a distinction I’ve never considered before.
I thought you’d like this:
It compelled me to actually go look up reactive vs responsive.
Responsiveness implies thoughtful action that considers long and short term outcome in the context of the situation at hand. Reactive behavior is immediate and without conscious thought, like a knee jerk response. Reactive behavior is often driven by the emotions.
I’d argue firefighters who reactive without thought are likely to end up dead. I’d say they are a responsive profession. The initial ‘get me to the scene of the fire’ might be reactive (I don’t know enough about this to be sure), but en route they probably prepare based on the information they have at hand eg oil fire - use foam not water. Then at the scene they take stock again ...and again until the fire is under control. And of course, they sometimes need to order the team to leave and let the building burn. They focus on saving lives...not buildings.
Btw: My parents house almost got burnt down last year when an arsonist set fire to the forest next to their farm.
It was scary for me because I’d had a medical investigation earlier in the day, with sedation, and I was forbidden to drive or make any decisions. I reacted when I got the text messages from my 75 year old mum saying “I can hear the fire crackling now”, but I couldn’t respond. My dad was dying at the time, but they managed to pack their cars into their car and get away.
Fortunately, the firefighters responded extremely quickly and, apart from ruining the view out their kitchen window, it all turned out okay.