Colloquial Soliloquy

We all have images in our mind’s eye that defines what we think a cer­tain type of per­son or a cer­tain voca­tion must be like. Very few mem­bers of John-Q-Public ever have the oppor­tu­nity to see what an enlisted Sol­dier, an NCO, or an Offi­cer of the Army is really like. Too much of our knowl­edge is formed by Hol­ly­wood and the TV net­works, even in this age of alter­nate media report­ing. Maybe more strides have been made dur­ing my life­time to cor­rect this prob­lem than ever before. Yet, I think a fully-orbed view of who the cit­i­zen sol­dier “is” may be too much for peo­ple to grasp. Addi­tion­ally I think it is too trau­matic for them to grasp. Because, if they did then they would have to care, and if they cared then they would have to do some­thing about it. By “some­thing” I don’t mean carry a sign, write a con­gress­man, or for­ward an email. No. I mean they would really have to do some­thing tan­gi­ble in the same man­ner as when your three year old says “please, I am hungry” — and the cost of actu­ally doing some­thing is for some of them too high. Far too high. So it is eas­ier to ide­al­ize our Sol­diers, our Offi­cers, and the like by cast­ing them in the role of sin­ner or saint. In that way the observers can embrace as much or as lit­tle as they can afford to embrace.

Since his return, we have talked at great lengths about Damon’s mil­i­tary expe­ri­ences and how it has changed and impacted him — both in good ways and in ways that are not so good. One way it has impacted him for the bet­ter is a newly devel­oped empa­thetic under­stand­ing of sol­diers. The time he spent in TraDoc was enough for him to have devel­oped a deep sense of appre­ci­a­tion and a per­sonal con­nec­tion to his “Broth­ers in Arms.” Sol­diers gen­er­ally are not iconic to other sol­diers. Damon was pro­cess­ing in his quote above how the cit­i­zen sol­dier is often a blank can­vas for super-ego pro­jec­tion, and how we tend to see sol­diers more as an iconic fig­ure than as sim­ply another human.

There is a por­trait in my den that is almost fin­ished. It’s a por­trait of Mike that

Damon painted from a snap­shot pic­ture. The por­trait dis­plays Mike on his 21st birth­day, dressed in his bat­tle rat­tle, hold­ing a weapon, and look­ing tiredly into the cam­era. His eyes, in both the pic­ture and the paint­ing, are very shad­owed due to the angle of the lens and the rel­a­tive posi­tion of the sun. It is not exactly the best light­ing in which to see the details of a person’s face. Damon titled the work “Not just another pretty face.” He wanted to call it that because to our fam­ily Mike is more, so much more, than just a soldier.

I would never say “just a sol­dier” in a way to demean or degrade the posi­tion he has cho­sen, please don’t read that with the wrong tone nor take it out of con­text. When I say he is more than a sol­dier to us I mean he is our son, brother, friend, etc. He just so hap­pens to be a sol­dier too. This is a hard thing to keep in mind in the praxis arena of “troop appre­ci­a­tion” for a lot of peo­ple. Mike and Damon both are many other things to many peo­ple. They also, through mil­i­tary ser­vice, have become a sym­bol for many peo­ple in many places. For some that sym­bol is mali­cious and for oth­ers it is saintly. For some the sym­bol is that of free­dom and democ­racy, and for oth­ers it’s a sym­bol of fierce might. What ever the pro­jec­tions are there is always an ele­ment of sym­bolic sac­ri­fice mixed up in the solu­tion. Soci­etal entropy of this mix­ture, due to past and present con­flicts and their impact on our Coun­try, has cre­ated an amal­ga­ma­tion of sym­bol­ism and real­ism that are for­ever bound together. The sac­ri­fice is real. It is acutely real, but we have too often taken their sac­ri­fice as our very own gar­ment to wear. I have a prob­lem with this aspect of things.

Mike’s sac­ri­fices are his. He made them. He made the deci­sion to join the Army at a time of war. I am very proud of him, but I do not think that his ser­vice exon­er­ates me, or any­one else, from sac­ri­fice. I still have a duty, an oblig­a­tion and a respon­si­bil­ity to live my life every­day as a cit­i­zen of a Coun­try that is engag­ing in a long and extremely tax­ing war. I am not exon­er­ated from being mind­ful and from being a good cit­i­zen. I am not released of my respon­si­bil­i­ties, both explicit and implicit, that tie and bind me to the law, my fam­ily and my neighbors.

The sac­ri­fice a sol­dier gives is both eso­teric and imme­di­ate to the indi­vid­ual. The per­cep­tion of that sac­ri­fice by oth­ers some­times becomes iconic to the point of for­get­ting that under all of the armor the sol­dier wears also beats a heart of flesh. Their sac­ri­fice is not minor or triv­ial, it is not a slo­gan, and it is most cer­tainly not being made so that we can live a life void of aware­ness and con­sid­er­a­tion of our fel­low cit­i­zens and dis­re­gard­ing toward our own demo­c­ra­tic inher­i­tance. Their sac­ri­fices con­sist of time, labor, sweat and blood — both their own and their fallen friends. They are called “sac­ri­fices” because these are the things that are given, will­ingly by them, that can never be restored to them or paid back to them. They, through their own work and sac­ri­fice, make a col­lec­tive deposit of free­dom for the rest of us. They pay a mighty high price for this com­mod­ity that is often, even in a time of war, taken for granted.

I faced rede­ploy­ment with great trep­i­da­tion, as I have men­tioned in pre­vi­ous entries. I won­dered what peo­ple would see when they see a young man come home from Iraq. He is a return­ing sol­dier and cit­i­zen, but is it pos­si­ble to look into his eyes and not see “just another pretty face?” Is it pos­si­ble to look at the face of a sol­dier and see beyond the image of a procu­ra­tor of free­dom and democ­racy, and see the “papa” who is miss­ing his lit­tle girl? Can we really look that father in the face and for a moment allow the flood­gates of empa­thy to open up hell-deep as we imag­ine how it would feel to miss one, two or more years of our own child’s life and development?

What do you see when you meet a sol­dier or spy a man in uni­form in pub­lic? Do you see shad­ows of them or do you see the sub­stance of the human being inside the ACUs? Are we nam­ing pro­jected shapes in our Pla­tonic Cave, or are we gaug­ing our views of these men and women on the basis of what is real, which is the self-evident truth of their human­ity. Sym­bols do not sac­ri­fice, bleed, die or mourn, humans do — sol­diers do. Sym­bols don’t long for home, safety and rest for a weary body, sol­diers do. I think it is time to recon­nect the sym­bol and metaphor to the ten­sion that cre­ates a crit­i­cal aware­ness. When that ten­sion is lost, and the liv­ing object takes on the life­less regard of the actual sym­bol, then the metaphor is bro­ken and is no longer effective.

The sac­ri­fices of our sol­diers make are not mine to claim. They do not sac­ri­fice for me in the sense that they take all of my bur­dens of sac­ri­fice on them­selves. Their sac­ri­fice and work keeps me free so that I can offer the sac­ri­fice of mind­ful self-governance and com­pas­sion as a neigh­bor to my fel­low cit­i­zens. I also have to hold tightly to the truth that not only am I free, but I have a duty and the respon­si­bil­ity to remain that way.