Last week, Bobby Wesson of Alabama took a photo of his wife taking a nap with their toddler son shortly before she was to work a gruelling 14-hour shift. His wife, Rayena, is a nurse, an incredibly demanding job that’s also one of the most under-appreciated.
Bobby decided to show his appreciation for Rayena’s tireless work by sharing the photo on Facebook with a touching caption:
This is my wife taking a nap. In an hour she will wake up, put on her scrubs and get ready for work. The tools and…
Posted by Bobby Wesson on Saturday, November 7, 2015
The post has since gone viral and encouraged us to reflect upon our own perception of stress and the factors of one’s work that society deems praiseworthy, with consideration to the tough nature of nursing. Sure, we all know how onerous a task it is to carry the weight of other peoples’ well-being on your shoulders, but we’ve never applied the term ‘hero’ to someone who dutifully accepts that burden.
Bobby’s post convinced us that we absolutely should – and got us thinking about why he hadn’t before.
No matter the profession, young professionals today believe that their jobs push them to the brink of their personal breaking point. The threshold of burnout is often arbitrary, more so a matter of individual conditioning than inherent capacity. Some of us are more capable of managing heavy workloads than others on account of acclimatizing to stress, but it’s safe to say we all have at least a little bit more in the tank than someone who treads blood, bile, tears, and fire daily. Compare your big marketing presentation to prepping a gunshot victim for emergency surgery, or your two-hour commute to stabilizing an overdosed heroine addict; you probably wouldn’t feel righteous to tell a nurse how burnt out you are.
Another reason we were so moved by this message is because people are too often praised based on a shallow notion of worthiness. Look at most articles online that glorify successful individuals – they are almost exclusively measured by monetary accomplishment. What if we changed that criteria; if we idolized those who have a responsibility to people in need, as Rayena does, instead of those who have a responsibility to shareholders? Or if the number one spot on a Forbes list was determined by how many lives that person saved instead of how many billions of dollars they earned? A person’s altruistic contributions are completely absent in the ways we view professional achievement. Based on the success of Bobby’s post, this is seemingly the result of media narrative rather than reader taste.
Bobby’s message is necessary and enlightening, but it probably shouldn’t be. If we can look beyond our own professional bubbles and consider other peoples’ daily grind, and shift our definition of success from one that lauds value over profit, perhaps it wouldn’t require a Facebook post to remind us just how commendable it is for someone to commit their life to a job like nursing.
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