"We were sold a lie early on... And so we took the deal... We put our heads down, endured, and reached the other side... (W)e found a pile of responsibilities, obligations, and an ever growing list of things that piss us off."
I notice you sometimes write as though you had a mouse in your pocket. Anyway...
A college buddy of mine is now a professor. Every now and then he puts me in touch with a student who is considering the Peace Corps or some similar international program. I have one piece of advice for all of them: be absolutely honest with yourself about what your motivations are, even if those motivations aren't very flattering. You can tell all your friends how big-hearted you are, and that's fine, and there's probably even a lot of truth in it. But maybe a chunk of your motivation, I explain to the students, is a mercenary desire for income and career opportunities. Worse, maybe you're one of those who feels a bit of schadenfreude at the plight of the less fortunate. If so, don't let shame blind you to yourself. Of course, you'll never admit schadenfreude to others, but if it really is what you feel, then within the privacy of your own head, you'd better be honest about it. Be honest with yourself about your motives, even if some of your motives are bad ones.
The reason for this is, even in the weird world of aid & development programs, you'll have good days and bad days. If you've lied to yourself about your motives, those bad days will break you. For example, as I explain to these students, pretend you work with children in a refugee camp. Pretend you tell your friends back home that you feel a selfless desire to serve-- and maybe you really do feel that-- but the truth is, there's a part of you that really enjoys the hero worship that you sometimes get from the kids. Maybe you wish you weren't so petty, but it is what it is.
One day, you selflessly help tons of people but, as chance would have it, no hero worship that day. You go to bed that night feeling a little unfulfilled. If you are honest about your motives, you know exactly why you feel unfulfilled; so, no problem. If you are dishonest-- if you insist to yourself that your only goal is selfless service-- then you'll go nuts trying to figure out why you feel unfulfilled.
I've seen this break people. I've seen aid workers pull out and go home because the stress of maintaining a pretense drew more energy than they possessed. Now, how much help will you be to the refugees, or anybody, if you've quit and gone home? No help at all. I'd rather have the aid worker who, deep down, knows he's got one or two crummy reasons for being here. That guy might be flawed, but at least he hangs around and gets stuff done.
I'm at the age where all of my career military friends have had back surgery, or hip surgery, or knee surgery, or ankle surgery. It comes from rucking with incorrect technique and from rucking with loads that are beyond what human anatomy can handle. It doesn't matter how "fit" or bad-ass somebody is; vertebral disks are constructed out of matter, and there's a limit of compressive force beyond which a disk's elasticity will fail. A warrior can do some things to push those limits out a just little bit further, but the limits still exist.
I'm at the age where I've seen some of the shortcomings in military training. Even the elite guys ("elite"... dangle that descriptor under their nose, and watch the youngsters fall into line!) are given an education that falls short of what it might be. The trade-off gives the military numbers. It's cheaper to teach shoddy rucking technique to thousands (and pay the VA bills later in life, apparently), than to provide boutique training that would obviate the need for most of those surgeries. They'd rather burden the infantryman with more gear than find a more lightweight method of fighting. In short, the government is willing to sacrifice many of your spines in the long term if doing so will accomplish its mission in the short term. Is this bad? Yes: war is horrible.
Now, there's a temptation to take a cynical attitude to all this and rashly conclude that military service just isn't worth it. But that wouldn't be the truth. Like a selfish aid worker, a government enters a war with various motives at play, and some of those motives are unflattering. One of its ugliest is a desire for its soldiers to surrender their free will to the chain of command. Individuals enter war with a mix of motives too, some motives better than others. People who are on the same side can be fighting for very different reasons.
There is no particular reason why a soldier's motives have to be the same as those of his government (the motives have to align, but they don't have to be the same). It follows, then, that the individual can have, from his own perspective, a very rewarding career, even if compatriots consider the enterprise to have been a failure. It follows that good things might be accomplished. The career can be worth it.
I think we might be talking past each other a bit. 'Last Straw' wasn’t about motivations in service or military flaws, it was about not letting the small frustrations of life pile up and turn into bitterness. But hey, maybe the mouse in my pocket and I need to be more clear next time. That said, I do think self honesty plays a role in endurance. People who aren’t honest with themselves about their own expectations, whether in aid work, the military, or just everyday life, can break under disillusionment. But the goal of this piece wasn’t to weigh the morality of motives; it was to remind people that fighting the wrong battles (like fixating on daily irritations) can lead to exhaustion. What about the essay made you think of this?”
I think this part, and other bits like it, are what got me going about motives and honesty:
"Petty frustrations, each one insignificant alone, but together they form a slow, suffocating avalanche. The pressure builds, unnoticed, until one day, snap. And not over something grand. Not over loss, war, or betrayal. No, it’s a stubbed toe, a coffee cup slipping through your fingers, the damn robotic automated phone menu that doesn’t have an option to reach a real human being. And that’s the moment it happens, the mask slips, the patience shatters, and suddenly, you’re standing there, vibrating with rage over something so stupid it would be hilarious if it weren’t happening to you."
I don't know if you meant it this way or not, but that's pretty much a textbook description of how people get PTSD. People mask over things they don't want to face (such as unflattering motivations), and they get by just fine until exposure to major stressors-- loss, war, betrayal, etc.-- overwhelms their ability to maintain the mask. Then something as little as a stubbed toe or spilled coffee can cause them to lose it. (I don't think I'm saying anything you don't already know; just pointing out how well it reflects what you wrote.)
In Kandahar, a certain friend of mine suffered a pretty horrible death. The details were such that, when I heard about it, I immediately thought that I couldn't have been killed in that particular manner. Barely had I experienced such a thought when I got flooded by guilt-- guilt for feeling superior, which immediately turns into guilt for surviving while my friend died. I think the only way to get through an experience like that without turning into a self-loathing basket case is to be internally honest about one's thoughts and feelings, even the ugly ones. I found my ugly, saw it for what it was, and eventually moved on. It's no longer lying in wait, ready to pounce the moment I spill my coffee.
It's not the incident that can get us, it's the aftermath. Maybe that's not where you were going with all this, but that's what I see.
I see what you’re saying, and yeah, I didn’t frame it that way intentionally, but the parallel makes sense. The way PTSD builds, layered suppression, maintaining a mask, and then breaking over something small, definitely mirrors how people lose themselves in frustration and bitterness. It’s not always the big events that get you, but what comes after.
Your example of processing survivor’s guilt through internal honesty is exactly the kind of self awareness I was getting at, just on a much deeper level. Whether it’s small daily frustrations or something as heavy as trauma, ignoring what’s beneath it doesn’t make it disappear. It just waits for the right moment to surface.
Maybe the only real difference between frustration and deeper trauma is the weight behind the snap. The spilled coffee moment happens in both cases, but for some, it’s just a bad day. For others, it’s everything they’ve been avoiding crashing down at once.
A great Sunday sermon! Thank you
"We were sold a lie early on... And so we took the deal... We put our heads down, endured, and reached the other side... (W)e found a pile of responsibilities, obligations, and an ever growing list of things that piss us off."
I notice you sometimes write as though you had a mouse in your pocket. Anyway...
A college buddy of mine is now a professor. Every now and then he puts me in touch with a student who is considering the Peace Corps or some similar international program. I have one piece of advice for all of them: be absolutely honest with yourself about what your motivations are, even if those motivations aren't very flattering. You can tell all your friends how big-hearted you are, and that's fine, and there's probably even a lot of truth in it. But maybe a chunk of your motivation, I explain to the students, is a mercenary desire for income and career opportunities. Worse, maybe you're one of those who feels a bit of schadenfreude at the plight of the less fortunate. If so, don't let shame blind you to yourself. Of course, you'll never admit schadenfreude to others, but if it really is what you feel, then within the privacy of your own head, you'd better be honest about it. Be honest with yourself about your motives, even if some of your motives are bad ones.
The reason for this is, even in the weird world of aid & development programs, you'll have good days and bad days. If you've lied to yourself about your motives, those bad days will break you. For example, as I explain to these students, pretend you work with children in a refugee camp. Pretend you tell your friends back home that you feel a selfless desire to serve-- and maybe you really do feel that-- but the truth is, there's a part of you that really enjoys the hero worship that you sometimes get from the kids. Maybe you wish you weren't so petty, but it is what it is.
One day, you selflessly help tons of people but, as chance would have it, no hero worship that day. You go to bed that night feeling a little unfulfilled. If you are honest about your motives, you know exactly why you feel unfulfilled; so, no problem. If you are dishonest-- if you insist to yourself that your only goal is selfless service-- then you'll go nuts trying to figure out why you feel unfulfilled.
I've seen this break people. I've seen aid workers pull out and go home because the stress of maintaining a pretense drew more energy than they possessed. Now, how much help will you be to the refugees, or anybody, if you've quit and gone home? No help at all. I'd rather have the aid worker who, deep down, knows he's got one or two crummy reasons for being here. That guy might be flawed, but at least he hangs around and gets stuff done.
I'm at the age where all of my career military friends have had back surgery, or hip surgery, or knee surgery, or ankle surgery. It comes from rucking with incorrect technique and from rucking with loads that are beyond what human anatomy can handle. It doesn't matter how "fit" or bad-ass somebody is; vertebral disks are constructed out of matter, and there's a limit of compressive force beyond which a disk's elasticity will fail. A warrior can do some things to push those limits out a just little bit further, but the limits still exist.
I'm at the age where I've seen some of the shortcomings in military training. Even the elite guys ("elite"... dangle that descriptor under their nose, and watch the youngsters fall into line!) are given an education that falls short of what it might be. The trade-off gives the military numbers. It's cheaper to teach shoddy rucking technique to thousands (and pay the VA bills later in life, apparently), than to provide boutique training that would obviate the need for most of those surgeries. They'd rather burden the infantryman with more gear than find a more lightweight method of fighting. In short, the government is willing to sacrifice many of your spines in the long term if doing so will accomplish its mission in the short term. Is this bad? Yes: war is horrible.
Now, there's a temptation to take a cynical attitude to all this and rashly conclude that military service just isn't worth it. But that wouldn't be the truth. Like a selfish aid worker, a government enters a war with various motives at play, and some of those motives are unflattering. One of its ugliest is a desire for its soldiers to surrender their free will to the chain of command. Individuals enter war with a mix of motives too, some motives better than others. People who are on the same side can be fighting for very different reasons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83OC6xDH-sM
There is no particular reason why a soldier's motives have to be the same as those of his government (the motives have to align, but they don't have to be the same). It follows, then, that the individual can have, from his own perspective, a very rewarding career, even if compatriots consider the enterprise to have been a failure. It follows that good things might be accomplished. The career can be worth it.
I think we might be talking past each other a bit. 'Last Straw' wasn’t about motivations in service or military flaws, it was about not letting the small frustrations of life pile up and turn into bitterness. But hey, maybe the mouse in my pocket and I need to be more clear next time. That said, I do think self honesty plays a role in endurance. People who aren’t honest with themselves about their own expectations, whether in aid work, the military, or just everyday life, can break under disillusionment. But the goal of this piece wasn’t to weigh the morality of motives; it was to remind people that fighting the wrong battles (like fixating on daily irritations) can lead to exhaustion. What about the essay made you think of this?”
I think this part, and other bits like it, are what got me going about motives and honesty:
"Petty frustrations, each one insignificant alone, but together they form a slow, suffocating avalanche. The pressure builds, unnoticed, until one day, snap. And not over something grand. Not over loss, war, or betrayal. No, it’s a stubbed toe, a coffee cup slipping through your fingers, the damn robotic automated phone menu that doesn’t have an option to reach a real human being. And that’s the moment it happens, the mask slips, the patience shatters, and suddenly, you’re standing there, vibrating with rage over something so stupid it would be hilarious if it weren’t happening to you."
I don't know if you meant it this way or not, but that's pretty much a textbook description of how people get PTSD. People mask over things they don't want to face (such as unflattering motivations), and they get by just fine until exposure to major stressors-- loss, war, betrayal, etc.-- overwhelms their ability to maintain the mask. Then something as little as a stubbed toe or spilled coffee can cause them to lose it. (I don't think I'm saying anything you don't already know; just pointing out how well it reflects what you wrote.)
In Kandahar, a certain friend of mine suffered a pretty horrible death. The details were such that, when I heard about it, I immediately thought that I couldn't have been killed in that particular manner. Barely had I experienced such a thought when I got flooded by guilt-- guilt for feeling superior, which immediately turns into guilt for surviving while my friend died. I think the only way to get through an experience like that without turning into a self-loathing basket case is to be internally honest about one's thoughts and feelings, even the ugly ones. I found my ugly, saw it for what it was, and eventually moved on. It's no longer lying in wait, ready to pounce the moment I spill my coffee.
It's not the incident that can get us, it's the aftermath. Maybe that's not where you were going with all this, but that's what I see.
I see what you’re saying, and yeah, I didn’t frame it that way intentionally, but the parallel makes sense. The way PTSD builds, layered suppression, maintaining a mask, and then breaking over something small, definitely mirrors how people lose themselves in frustration and bitterness. It’s not always the big events that get you, but what comes after.
Your example of processing survivor’s guilt through internal honesty is exactly the kind of self awareness I was getting at, just on a much deeper level. Whether it’s small daily frustrations or something as heavy as trauma, ignoring what’s beneath it doesn’t make it disappear. It just waits for the right moment to surface.
Maybe the only real difference between frustration and deeper trauma is the weight behind the snap. The spilled coffee moment happens in both cases, but for some, it’s just a bad day. For others, it’s everything they’ve been avoiding crashing down at once.