That morning felt like any other workday, except I reached the office at 7:50 AM, instead of my usual 9:15 arrival. At this early hour, I found myself sitting in the training room for a First-Aid training scheduled for 8:00 AM. Like most people, I wasn’t exactly thrilled. Let’s admit it: sessions on fire safety, emergency response, or first-aid often feel like “forced participation.” We think these topics don’t impact our daily lives. But the truth is, they could end up impacting someone’s entire life.

Let’s be honest about that word – “forced participation”. It perfectly captures how most of us feel about emergency response training. Fire safety drills? CPR workshops? “I’ll catch the next one.” We treat these sessions like inconvenient interruptions to our real work, not recognizing them for what they truly are: “potential life-savers”.

Our trainer was exceptional. She didn’t just demonstrate the mechanics of CPR; she explained the “why” behind every compression, every breath. She covered cardiac attacks versus cardiac arrests with such clarity that complex medical concepts became accessible to everyone in the room.

But then something happened that I wasn’t prepared for.

As she described cardiac arrest, the sudden stopping of the heart, the crucial first few minutes, the importance of immediate response, my mind travelled back 22 years. I was 22 when I lost my father to a cardiac arrest. In that training room, listening to life-saving techniques I’d never learned, a devastating realization hit me: there might have been an opportunity to save him.

Twenty-two years later, I was learning skills that could have made a difference in the most important moment of my young life.

We live in an age of instant information. You can learn almost anything with a quick search or YouTube video. Yet here I was, a professional with two decades of experience, attending my first emergency response training. How is this possible?

The answer is uncomfortable but honest: “apathy”. We don’t prioritize these skills because they don’t seem immediately relevant to our daily lives. We convince ourselves that emergencies happen to other people, in other places, at other times.

It’s easy to fall back on philosophical thinking – “life and death are in God’s hands”, we say, shrugging off our own potential to intervene. But this comfortable distance from responsibility crumbles when you realize that simple knowledge could have changed everything.

Here’s what strikes me as “profoundly ironic”: we constantly pray for the long lives of our loved ones, yet most of us can’t perform basic life-saving techniques. We worry about their safety but don’t equip ourselves with the skills that could actually protect them when it matters most.

I don’t know if knowing CPR would have saved my father’s life. Medical emergencies are complex, and outcomes aren’t guaranteed. But I do know this, I would have had the satisfaction of trying. I would have had the peace of mind that comes from doing everything possible in those critical moments.

If my story resonates with you, don’t let it end with sympathy or good intentions. Take action. Sign up for that first-aid course you come across. Learn CPR. Understand the difference between cardiac arrest and heart attack. Know what to do when someone is choking.

These aren’t just professional development opportunities, they’re investments in your ability to protect the people you love.

The training I attended lasted just a few hours, but its impact will last a lifetime. Not just because I now know how to respond in an emergency, but because I finally understand the weight of knowledge I chose to live without for so long.

Don’t wait decades like I did. Don’t let “someday” become “too late.” The life you save might be the one that matters most to you.

Your future self and your loved ones will thank you for taking action today.

Love, Amit