Veteran's Day reflection: What the Army taught me
Disclaimer: I am not a self-help guru, and have no qualification to be. I don't think my life is perfect, and will never claim to have it figured out. I want to share a couple lessons so others can learn from my mistakes, but also to remind myself. When you read this, know it's coming from a place of humility.
Veteran's Day became a very different holiday in 2010. It was my first year looking at it from the outside, after leaving active duty that spring.
It was no longer a virtual parade thrown for me and my comrades; A 4 day weekend, free lunches everywhere and gratitude coming from every direction.
That was all replaced by bitter reflections on my experience. I had allowed my 2008 deployment to Afghanistan to demoralize me so badly, all I could see were the ways I felt we had been mistreated. I hadn't seen combat, I wasn't traumatized by things I'd seen, but my mind and soul were still fucked.
I had lost my identity, my life's mission and much of my pride. I started working in a civilian job, with a much lower standard of leadership and discipline than I was used to. People didn't always do what they said they would do, leaders put their career aspirations before their people and organization. Aside from being able to sleep past 5 AM, civilian life was not what I wanted it to be.
I grieved for The Army like a loved one, through most of the five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The anger and bargaining ones took the longest and are what most of my friends saw between 2010-2014. I became very vocal, very political, and very annoying.
This post is me accepting the experience for what it was, while being grateful for it. The fact is, I am a much stronger person with more opportunities available to me because of The Army and had I not so frequently damned the awful conformity of it, I could have even more to show for it.
The Army took the best things of what my parents (my father especially) taught me, and tempered it. My ego made me fight these lessons, HARD. That I was able to learn them at all, is a testament to the leaders I had, especially the NCOs and Officers in the Army ROTC dept at Texas A&M. Fortunately, they taught me these things before I entered active duty when the stakes were higher.
Rule #1: Don't feel sorry for yourself and never ask anyone else to, either.
“All you gotta do is learn to feel sorry for yourself. It’s one of the best indoor sports: feeling sorry for yourself — a sport enjoyed by all, especially the born losers”
It was a dark, cold, winter morning in Texas. The 3rd year ROTC cadets were taking a physical training test. I was sick. Everyone was always sick. We were all living on a floor with 60 other people, stressed out, and sleeping 4-6 hours a night.
We had 2 min to do as many pushups as possible. My sinuses were so congested that my head felt like it was going to explode. I did some amount that was not considered disgraceful, and quit. I felt sorry for myself. I could have done more if I was in good health. This was good enough.
"That's it, Messel?", SFC Vega demanded.
"I'm sick," I offered
"Is that what you're going to tell your Soldiers?" he asked.
"What an asshole," I thought, indignantly.
When you give up in the face of adversity, you signal to everyone around you that they are allowed to do the same. If you're leading any sort of team, they won't expect to be held accountable for anything.
There's always something or someone else to blame for your failure, and it's easy to find someone who will sympathize with you. You can make a Facebook post about it, and watch the "support" pour in. These people are not helping you. You need the friend who says "So what?" and helps you figure out how to cross that obstacle. The friend who always indulges your sense of victimhood, is helping you weaken yourself.
Rule #2: Life is, and people are, unfair. (see Rule #1)
One of the myriad of rules and regulations freshman cadets lived by was routine room inspections by sophomore cadets. We left our room in the morning for class, and returned in the afternoon to find our mattress thrown on the floor, and the results of the inspection scribbled on our bathroom mirror in permanent marker. Tip: If you ever need to remove permanent marker from a mirror, metal polish works well.
Most of us lived two to a room. At this time, I was solo, because my roommate had recently quit. An important, scheduled inspection was happening that afternoon, so I enlisted the help of a friend. The goal was 0 cuts (deficiencies). When he and I had finished, that room was the cleanest it had ever been, so I felt confident.
Inspection time.
My cleaning partner was gone, so it was just me and my sadist of a squad leader. He rode me hard, because I often cut corners, and in general was more nonchalant than others. It took a lot to wind me up even then. This infuriated everyone, but especially him.
He clomped in with his snakeskin boots.
He held the door open and ran his finger over the top.
"Dust. That's a cut"
(WTF? No one has ever checked there)
He climbed up on a bookshelf and stuck his finger into the A/C return. He rubbed the dust on my sheets with his finger.
"More dust"
(There's supposed to be dust on an air filter. That's what it does!)
When he was finished, I had something like 13 cuts. The most I'd ever heard of anyone having. I did the best I could do and had the worst results.
The rules were changed. He cheated. This was not fair.
The results of each inspection were announced in the hallway, with all of the freshman standing at attention, backs against the wall. If we had more than a certain # of cuts between us, we would not pass. There were consequences for not passing. My abysmal result made us fail. My friends were furious. The friend who helped me clean did not come to my defense.
You will be misjudged, mistreated, abused, manipulated. You won't deserve it, but it will happen. A lot. You can dwell in it and feel helpless, or realize that this is part of being alive, and that other people's actions are out of your control. If something is out of your control, then it's not worth dwelling on. Use that energy towards the things you can change.
Which leads me to. . .
Rule #3: Fuck it. Drive On. (FIDO)
This lesson is different, because I don't remember when I learned it, just when I realized I'd learned it. While in training, or on a mission, conditions would change due to things that were outside of our ability to control. Whatever we were doing still had to get done, so we had a choice to either:
A. Complain about it, feel sorry for ourselves
B. Say "Fuck it", and start working on a solution, or realize we had to endure it.
You're in the middle of a 14 mile road march and it starts pouring rain? FIDO.
Coworkers got together after work and didn't invite you? FIDO
Your uncle gives you a task, but You were going to Toshi Station to pick up some power converters ? FIDO
(If you prefer an allegory featuring mice, I highly recommend the book Who Moved My Cheese?, by Spencer Johnson.)
Whatever you are trying to accomplish will still need to get done when you are through complaining about how much harder it is now that ____ happened, so why not just skip ahead to the moment after you walk around to complain to your friends/coworkers/boss about what happened to you (remember Rule #1?), and just do the thing?
A very extreme example. I was at work on December 14, 2012 when we heard about the massacre at Sandy Hook. Our office was 20 miles away. There was a rumor an employee's son had been killed (tragically, he had). The office was in shock. People stood up at their desks and stared into space. They hugged each other and cried. My boss stood in his doorway and shook his head in disbelief. This is all normal, of course. Meanwhile, the phones were ringing. We were a heating and air conditioning company and it was December. I kept working, and started picking up phone calls. My friend on the other side of the cubicle wall (Navy vet) was doing the same. After the office closed (early), we went in the conference room and we half-joked what might be "wrong" with us. We dismissed what we couldn't control and realized things still had to get done. We didn't have time to fall apart right then. I went home that night and felt the horrific event. I'm sure he did too.
In other words: Be the person who can take charge when everything is upside down. Which brings us to. . .
Rule #4: Carry your weight, PLUS some.
This was the most literal of all the lessons. When I was a 4th year cadet, if we were in a group run, and someone fell out of the formation, we would stop, partner up, and take turns doing fireman carries with our partner. This was always a very bad time. Anyone who fell out of a run felt guilty because they were forced to watch the impact it had on the rest of the team. They might not be feeling well that day, but too bad. No one cares. Refer to Rules #1 and #3.
MSG Crowe taught us on those runs that: people aren't always equal in their abilities. Be ready, and jump at the opportunity to carry others. It's not your job? Doesn't matter. Help out anyways. They still might not be there when you need them, but in that case, refer to the first 3 rules.
Thanks very much for reading.
I'll repeat. I don't think I have it all figured out. These are lessons I learned the very hard way, that have helped me be a much more resilient, and therefore happy person. On this Veteran's Day, I want to pay tribute to the great men and women who taught them to me, and hope that they can help you, too.