Taking some time off and thinking about everything, my reasoning and what had essentially led to my decision in joining the Army I would have to say now that it was because of this unwitting desire to feel fear. As silly as this may sound, I don’t think I have ever experienced real fear; real honest to goodness fear, somehow I lack the brain wave to feel fear.
Now I will not say that I have never felt any sort of fear because that would be a lie, I have been scared before but never anything like the fear I thought the Army would instill in me. The idea of being scared senseless, scared into the fight or flight sensation, was something that I needed to experience firsthand. I had seen it before, but the same situation could illicit no such feeling from me.
The Army proved to do little in that effect, in fact all I felt most of the time was bored and/or tired. Here I am embarking on what I thought would be a learning experience, in my case to learn fear, and I wasn’t learning anything. I had already known how to get up early, I had known how to exercise (however minimally that was), and I had known how to take orders. My biggest problem through all this was that I didn’t want to do anything. In the beginning I just took orders and went though the motions. I was essentially a zombie and I was content. I never tried out for anything extra and I never wanted to excel in anything. I wanted to be nameless and faceless, just number 50 something out of the 64 on my platoon, this was my goal. In my physicality I am inept, but in my mental prowess I am exceptional. Passing this was be difficult, and I knew the next step would be something I did exceptionally well.
If this was in fact my call to arms then I was not heeding it well, I lacked discipline and I knew it. But at this point in my life, I was 21, I knew that there was no way that I was going to revert back to following orders blindly. For me there needed to be substance behind a request. “Sure you want me to run 2 miles in an allotted time but what is the point,” that was my daily thought process. Every task we were given I questioned it, these were my handicaps, and they were valid. Many things that I did not agree with or that I felt lacked substance I internally questioned. I desired more answers than what I was given, I noticed some people that were younger than me who followed blindly, and I thought maybe it was an age/wisdom boundary that many had no achieved, but I had found that even people older than I was still followed blindly. So what was it, a social or economic barrier, to this day I have yet to figure it out; with my middle class socioeconomic upbringing I didn’t think I was that much smarter than the smartest person in the room; that much more well off then the other soldiers, and yet my thought process was completely different than everyone else’s.
I stood there staring oblivion in the face and I was questioning it’s impact on me, my fellow soldiering candidates we facing the same oblivion as me and they just jumped head first towards it. Was I in fact feeling fear all along, fear that I wouldn’t be able to live up to the expectations of those that were around me? Was staring into the aforementioned oblivion and not jumping like everyone around me the one thing that made me fear, was this all along my “fight or flight” moment? Looking back I’m glad I questioned everything, I made the right choices and I don’t feel haunted by them.
I looked fear in the face and I smiled; not only did I smile but I questioned its impact. I have come to a conclusion on fear, it is in actuality just an irrational order that the brain impulses on the body, when I am faced with these sort of thoughts I can’t help but question their implicitness on my life and well being, there are always a number of things that can happens and they must be weighted against all odds. Only those who blindly follow orders, without so much as questioning them, do they feel fear. The Army has taught me that fear is both normal and abnormal, but overcoming said fear is the only way to move forwards, jumping headfirst is never the answer.
The Long Road 