On Friday night we attended the Air Force JROTC Awards Banquet. It was a very nice evening, and I was doubly impressed when I learned that it was a 100% student driven and planned event. The program is very new, and it has already accomplished some things that much older programs have not. The leadership in the program is awesome, and I think that the parental leadership at home is equally awesome. Both of those components can take kids a very long way in life.
The guest speaker we heard is a retired Navy Seal who served two consecutive tours in Vietnam and who earned a bronze star with a v-device for valor. His presence at the podium created a little tension though. It was not a bad tension, but maybe more of a little dissonance related tension. He was a very small man with an equally small voice. His build and demeanor was not what I was expecting, but the words he spoke and the fallen commarades he remembered was a testament to a very strong and determined man that was still present right there in front of us. He reminded us that “it does not matter the size of the dog in the fight, but what matters is the fight inside of the dog.” He told us he was just an ordinary man, but when Major dismissed us he reminded our Speaker that “there is NO such thing as an ordinary Seal!” Amen!
I have a ton of running to do this morning, and won’t get to blog until later. I thought I would do a re-run of a post I did last year. This post came to mind when I heard that Navy Seal speak. Courage, indeed!!
Courage
When I was in undergrad as a BSW major I dabbled in Philosophy. I was just one class away from being able to declare it as my minor, but decided against taking that last class due to overload. The final semester for a BSW consists of a full time internship, and the very nature of social work is working with client populations that have major stress factors attached at every angle. Also, at this point in my education I had become very disenchanted with the study of Philosophy. It seemed as if, to me anyway, there was too much value placed on who could ask the most profound question instead of who could provide anyone with the most profound evidence.
This frustration with academic Philosophy hit a peak for me when I was told during a class that there was no way to prove that evil truly exists. Well, to be quite honest in the convoluted vacuum of Metaphysics there is no way to prove that any of us exists. OK, so now that we are all just a figment of each other’s imaginations maybe we can all agree on something! That was my hope, but the questions would just get more bizarre, and to be honest at that time I couldn’t bring myself to care about the the impracticality in the study anymore. I was taking care of young children in the field of mental health whose minds, bodies, and little spirits had been ravaged by adults who possessed nothing in the lines of a soul or a conscience. I remember the statement “You can’t prove that evil exists!” when I read the file of a young girl who had not said a word in years, but rather barked like a dog because being a puppy was better than being a baby girl. Don’t tell me evil does not exist! [Read more →]
Tags: Morale, military, veterans, war on terror by Claire
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