Reading An Aspiring Professional Everything

When a movie or a book, a conversation or an idea or an event causes us to re-evaluate our perspective on life and our place within it, how are we to approach this momentous occasion?  What should we do if the change is so great it's staggering, challenging certain fundamentals we thought unshakeable in ourselves?

I suspect that each of us has at one time or another experienced this kind of change.  Sometimes, as in the occasion I now write of, the change in perspective is gradual in its beginning.  Then some catalyst, like pure oxygen added to a gas flame, ignites the pace of the shift, whipping it to a frenzied sprint towards new and uncertain thinking.  It is a wondrous thing, but frightening in its wonder.  Sometimes this change is for the better, sometimes not.  I'm not sure yet what it means for me.

I suppose it's pertinent to start at the beginning.  As previously written, I've lately felt somewhat depressed, a thing I've never experienced before.  The cause is almost certainly the shorter days of winter along with my work schedule, a combination which rarely allows me to see and enjoy and benefit from daylight for more than a couple of minutes in a day.  Whatever the cause, this changed state of mind has allowed, or perhaps forced, me to examine more coolly the facts of my life and the moral and ethical codes that drive my existence.

I am a nuclear missile launch officer, or missileer, in the United States Air Force.  I had to sign a document stating that, if directed by competent and legal authority, I will turn the keys to launch from one to fifty nuclear weapons.  I signed this document without hesitation because I believed and still do that my job is necessary to the security and freedom of the American public. 

It is a strange thing, to serve one's country.  A more proud and noble and righteous calling can scarcely be found.  We have a rich heritage of valor and heroism in the United States reaching back generations, from the American Revolution to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  My brethren and I have, from the birth of our country, sworn oaths and devoted our lives, even if only for a short time, to the defense of a constitution -- our Constitution.  We sacrifice the chance to put down roots and so much more to be patriots in truth.  I am proud to be an American Airman.

As I've said, I am proud to serve and I am proud to associate with all who've served with and before me.  Let me also be clear: I have not deployed to a war zone, nor have I been forced to bear or employ arms at any time.  The nuclear mission is, in a way, passive, though it is the deadliest man-made force on earth if employed.  My point here is that my thinking has not been influenced by the horrors of battle, but rather by a more gradual realization of exactly what my profession represents. 

The change, then, is that I know that I will not remain in the Air Force after my commitment is served, and, more than ever, I understand why.

What of the catalyst I mentioned, that new factor that accelerated the change?  I suppose catalysts would be the more appropriate word, because there were indeed a couple of them that hit together.  The first was the film adaptation of Into the Wild.

My wife and I rented and watched the movie in part because of my new-found fascination with one of the supporting actresses, but in larger part because it seemed simply a good story, and it is a good story.  The book and film follow the true journey of a young man named Christopher McCandless, recently graduated from Emory University.  Christopher gives up his worldly possessions to live as a "tramp," hiking back and forth across the US before heading north to the Alaskan wilderness.

It was this portrayal of utter freedom, the shedding of worldly possessions and so the miseries that accompany them, that took root in my heart.  I have a family to provide for that will, if God grants it, soon be growing, and so I cannot follow the example to the letter.  The idea, however, resonates within me.  So much of our time is spent struggling with ourselves and one another that could be better spent creating or improving our world, and it seems a kind of blasphemy to waste that time.  This was the first catalyst, the first breath of oxygen to flame that causes it to cough and sputter and flare.

The second was reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck, again and to my embarrassment discovered through that damned new fascination, but what a treasure this book has become to me!  The story parallels the tales of Adam and Eve and their first sons, Cain and Abel.  The tale is a familiar one, but it was Adam Trask, one of the main characters, that caught hold of me. 

Adam, through circumstances vital to the book's story, served in the Army.  Adam can be called a pacifist, and the horrors of war shook him when he could not inoculate his mind and spirit.  Because I have never seen combat, I could not yet identify with this particular demon.  For the first time, however, I have been able to examine through an entirely different lens my role as a missileer for the sheer power of destruction and death that it represents.  It has left me, in a word, shaken.

I remember, in fact, the moment that the change was completed.  I had just read a quote by the narrator of the book, and I reviewed it time and again.  I e-mailed it to my father, I read it and repeated it in my mind's eye, and I tried to make sense of the change that had so long been building in me and suddenly was finished.  Those words in East of Eden read:

"Then the soldiers went to Mexico and it was a kind of painful picnic. Nobody knows why you go to a picnic to be uncomfortable when it is so easy and pleasant to eat at home. The Mexican War did two good things though. We got a lot of western land, damn near doubled our size, and besides that it was a training ground for generals, so that when the sad self-murder settled on us the leaders knew the techniques for making it properly horrible."

There is nothing spectacular in the quote itself, nothing to shake a man's world -- only a brief recounting of the Mexican War and an allusion to the horrors of the Civil War.  We all learn as school children in the United States of that war; we know at once its treachery and the necessity for change it served to meet.  No, it was not historical fact that changed me.  It was the implicit disdain for violence and the loss -- or rather taking -- of human life in those sentences that bounced within my skull.

And so did the flame turn a cool, steady blue, hot enough to melt iron.

I don't mean that before all of this I was anxious for or enjoyed the thought of killing a man, but rather that it was something I could and did and do accept as a possibility and part of my duty as an officer.  I also do not mean that I won't kill if my duties require it of me -- I am not a conscientious objector, I strive to be a man of honor, and I will keep my word.  My word, in this case, was that I would support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, and so I will.

When my time is served, I will return home.  I will do so a changed man with a much clearer perspective on my role in this world.  I don't know yet what my purpose is, but I know what it is not.  I am and will forever be proud to have served with the best, noblest men and women on Earth, and I thank all those who will fill the need in serving to protect the United States and her people. 

Though the cause is worthy and necessary, I do not believe I can make a career of armed service.  I do not regret my time in the military, and when I return home I will seek and wonder and question and poke and prod until I've secured my place in history, no matter how small or large, but I know this -- my path will be a peaceful one in every way that it is within my power to make it.  God bless.

- John

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Posted in: Reflections