Knee Deep in the Hooah!

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!

Then I remember hearing the arguments around human characteristics and attributes. Of course there were many discussions around the subjectivity of human experiences like love and death. We even discussed courage one day. I don’t remember the entire discussion around courage. I think I may have nodded off to sleep for a moment. Courage was a word to those in the class that meant everything from being strong enough to voice your stance on an issue, to wearing your hair green if you wanted to. I think that they got the term courage and pluckiness confused. Dying your hair green does not take sacrifice and love. Voicing your opinion may or may not. I found the whole topic disturbing, and it still bothers me to this day. What is courage if it is not the things that were discussed in my class that day? Being a dual military family, and having the incredible privilege to know other military wive and parents has given me the opportunity to understand courage a little more. Here are some acts of courage that I have been blessed to witness:

Courage is the young soldier who packs his ruck diligently to head over to the Middle East. He may be scared, but his heart is strong and he faces his fears with the reassurance that he has been prepared adequately and his family is behind him.

Courage is displayed by the wife who kisses her husband good-bye for the last time before the sand from that distant and dangerous place will kiss his face for a year, or more. She will walk away broken hearted and full of fear, but she will smile at her kids and act like she just knows that he will be fine — even when she doesn’t know it for sure in her heart.

Courage is evident in the young person who walks into the Recruiter’s station ready to say the words “I want to serve.” Knowing that our Country is at war, and that the chances of deployment are imminent can not stop the desire to fulfill his duty. Rather those threats make his desire to serve all the more strong.

Courage is witnessed by those around the young soldier’s mother when he is deployed. She hangs her yellow ribbon on her tree, she will talk to anyone who will listen, and she will defend his mission with every fiber in her body. She knows that even in the face of doubts and arguments about the war, her son must hear words of encouragement and words of belief in order for his morale to stay high.

Courage is the single father who is watching his young son prepare for deployment. He is both proud and mortified, and he aches to be with his son in battle. He has never been known to sit back idly while his children tread where danger is, but this time he must. He will pack care packages and send a cigar once in a while to say to his beloved son “I know you are a capable man!”

Courage is the American who refuses to collapse and be crippled in the face of threats of terrorism. It is the American who remembers vividly the pictures, sounds and smells of where she was on September 11, 2001, but still refuses to live in dread. It is the American who dug his heals into the ground and decided resolutely that day that he would not stop seeing his loved ones on the opposite coast and he would not stop his career because it involved flying. He faces his fear and adversity with a stone resolve.

Courage is evident in the husband and wife who decide that it is a sacrifice worth making for him to stay an extra tour instead of coming home when planned. That extra year of sacrifice will be a difficult path to walk, but they face their adversity together and cling to the hope of reunification.

I still can not define exactly what courage is, but I can recognize it when I see it. I am coming to understand that courage can not ever be divorced from love, commitment, and morality. They are all individual strands, but part of the same braid. You have to love with your whole heart before you can truly display courage. You have to commit yourself to the task at hand immediately and completely so you will not waiver when the sea of trial tosses you around. Courage may seem like a subjective experience or idea, but I can recognize it and admire it, and sometimes I am even able to emulate it.

Tags: Morale, military, veterans, war on terror //