Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.

Don’t forget to click the link to see what everyone else has to say on this week’s subject. It’s at the end of my post.

Here’s a blast from the past – Feb. 2019 to be exact. What have you done to make the world a better place?

I don’t remember this question, so I checked my history. I first contributed to this BlogHop on May 13th, 2019. So I just missed this one. As I have no previous answer to refer to, I’ll just have to tell you what I think I would have said then.

It’s a tricky thing to quantify, because you never know what might have happened if things had been just slightly different at any point in the past. In another possible life, I might have done something world famous, or infamous. If any one of the events that shaped me hadn’t happened exactly as they did, who knows?

It’s also important to remember that everything’s connected. The Butterfly effect applies.

If I hadn’t seen the woman who was to become my wife when I was working in a pub, there wouldn’t have been the three wonderful daughters that we produced. One is now a senior midwife, involved in researching Fetal Medicine, one is an Oncology nurse screening people for Bowel Cancer and the other works in Renal Dialysis. All three of them are saving lives and advancing medical science on a regular basis.

And who knows what the people they interact with will do with the extra time?

Maybe that’s why we met? But then I wonder. Perhaps it wasn’t ever about us, but them? Maybe they were what was really meant to be, for what they would do? It could be that the world is a better place because of who they interact with.

Apart from that, I like to think that I’ve had a positive impact on things myself. While they might not have been earth-shattering, front-page news, I can certainly look back at a couple of times when I made a difference to people’s lives.

In March 1986, I was sailing on a chemical tanker when a fire broke out in its engine room. Our cargo was extremely flammable, so it needed to be dealt with quickly, for obvious reasons.

In company with one of the other crew, I put on a fire suit and breathing apparatus, and between us we tackled the fire, which was caused by a fuel leak onto the boiler lagging.

This produced a lot of dense smoke, as well as the flames, which we finally managed to extinguish. We then rescued the chief engineer, who had been trapped on the wrong side of the fire.

He was pleased to see us; he thanked us, brought us a few beers and was able to go home to his wife and family.

As we all were.

In not quite so dramatic fashion, when I was a Thames River pilot, in the early 2000s, I was taking the sail-training vessel Tenacious downriver from Tower Bridge, which involved transiting the Thames Flood Barrier.

This particular vessel was specifically designed to allow disabled people to experience seafaring, with wheelchair access and specially modified equipment. Including a talking compass.

The captain told me they had a blind student on board, and he asked me if I would allow him to steer the ship through the flood barrier. The captain assured me that he considered him capable of the task.

I thought, why not?

He took the wheel as we passed Greenwich. I gave him the same instructions I would have given anyone. He was an excellent helmsman. With the help of the talking compass, he kept a good course without prompting and followed my orders perfectly.

I will never forget the look on his face when I told him that the barrier lay astern and that he had taken us through it.

It may have only been a little thing, but to him, it meant a lot.

What do you think about this week’s subject?

Let me know by leaving me a comment.

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I’ll be back with another post on Thursday. See you then. Meanwhile, have a great week.

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