Sometimes, in the daily challenges that life presents us with, we miss what is really important. We may fail to say hello, please or even to congratulate someone on something wonderful or simply perform a good deed for no reason at all.
Charles Plumb, a US Naval Academy graduate, was a pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy lands. He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal and now letures on lessons learned there.
One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a coffee shop, a man at another table came up and said; “You’re Plumb, aren’t you? You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, and if I remember correctly, you were shot down!” “How did you come by that information?” asked Plumb. in surprise. “I packed your parachute,” was this man’s unexpected reply. Plumb gasped with surprise and gratitude. The man pumped his hand and said. “I guess it worked!” “It sure did,” Plumb assured him. If the chute you packed hadn’t opened, I would not be here today.”
Plumb was unable to sleep that night, thinking about that incident. He wondered how many times he might have seen that young man and not even said good morning to him, how are you, or anything else, because he was a fighter pilot and the guy who’d packed his parachute had been simply a sailor.
Plumb thought of the many hours that young sailor had spent working on a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully folding the silk of each parachute, each time holding in his hands the fate of some pilot he had never even met.
So, when Plumb gives a talk, he asks his audience each time; ““Who’s packing your parachute? We all need someone to provide what we need to enable us to make it through each day. He adds that when his plane was shot down, he needed many kinds of parachutes: his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional parachute, and his spiritual parachute. He said that he called on all these supports before reaching safety.” His advice to us all is to prepare ourselves to weather whatever storms lie ahead. “As you go through this week, this month, this year, … be wise and recognize the people who pack your parachute.”