Author: Sean Patrick Hughes

Third Law

On Motion:

Law 1: Every body persists in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed.

Law 2: The alteration of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impress’d; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impress’d.

Law 3: To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction: or the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.

Isaac Newton, Philosophia Naturis Principia Mathematica, 1687.

On People:

Law 4: America is a people in motion. 

The common American narrative of the birth our nation is that our principled forefathers cast off the yoke of nearly two centuries of imperial British rule with the Declaration of Independence. Continue reading →

Redemption

Somewhere etched into the permanent part of my memory that is the scenes of my childhood, I have an impossibly clear recollection of my CCD teacher—Catholic for Sunday School—asking our class why we hunted for eggs on Easter. I gave it a shot and said that it had something to do with Christ’s resurrection and eggs being a symbol of life or something like that. I don’t know where I got the idea. But apparently I was close enough. She gave me a dollar.

Continue reading →

The Purpose of Strength

A lifetime ago I was stationed in a dusty outpost in a backwater province in one of the dozens of countries American men and women have served in dusty outposts in backwater provinces over the last twenty years. One afternoon, one of the local officials we were working with brought a woman to the burnt out old government building that served as our office. She was distraught. Her nine-year old son had gone missing two days before. And she came to us for help to find him.

She’d gotten a few voicemails from the people who had taken him. She played one of them for us. My chief and I listened. I ignored my interpreter as he translated what he heard. I didn’t need to know what was said. I could hear fear in the voice of a young boy. And then the threatening tone of a man. And then silence.

We asked her what she thought we could do to help. And she said that she hoped we could find him. My chief told our interpreter that we’d see what we could do and he relayed the message to her as he walked her out the door. That work wasn’t why we were there. But my chief and I rounded up a few of the team and did a little work anyway. And we made a little progress and came to the conclusion that if we had a few resources, we could probably go get that kid.

Later that night, at our evening meeting with the commanders we reported to, we gave them the situation and asked for the resources. And we were turned down. None were available. And trying to give it a go without them was a non-starter. I walked out of the meeting room with my stomach in a knot. I thought of what it was going to feel like when that woman came back the next day. When I had to tell her we couldn’t help. When there was no way she would understand that I just didn’t have the resources. And that ultimately it wasn’t up to me. All she would hear was that we couldn’t help her find her son.

My chief and I shuffled silently down the hall and out the door. When I turned towards the mess hall, my chief turned the opposite direction, back to our building. I asked where he was going. And he looked back over his shoulder without breaking his stride and said, “I’m gonna go get that kid.” He was surprised I asked. He took a few more steps and stopped and turned back to me.

“You don’t have to come.”

Then he turned and left. I stood there for a few seconds in moral limbo. And then I pulled the tin of Copenhagen from my cargo pocket, packed it, threw in a dip and followed after him. I could have ordered him to stop. But I knew he wouldn’t.

A few days later the boy was returned to his mother. How we found him without using the resources or without blatantly disobeying orders isn’t important. But we did. I called my wife that night and told her simply that we had done something good that day.

My bosses weren’t wrong. They made the proper and prudent decision. We weren’t there to do that job. And they really didn’t have the resources I asked for. And the risk to go it alone the way we would have without them was far too high. And if I were them, ten times out of ten, I would have made the same call they did. Because from where they were sitting, it was the right call. Because from where they were sitting, they couldn’t hear the fear in that boy’s voice. Or see the pain in that woman’s eyes when she heard it. And none of them were going to have to live with it for fifty years after that boy’s body got fished out of the river with no head and hands the way the last two boys that went missing did whose parents never came to us for help.

But what my chief understood immediately, and showed me the way so I could follow, was that sometimes, when the strong are far away from the pain and the suffering of it all, burdened by the grave responsibility to get it so right for so many, they forget some things. They forget that woman and her son were the unprotected innocent. And we were the strong. And sometimes, when we turn our eyes away from them for too long, we forget that those who need us most, are the purpose of our strength.

The strong are not strong because we can protect ourselves. You can do that by running and hiding. By never taking bold risks. By locking out the others. The purpose of strength is to be strong for others. Not for ourselves.

There is risk and consequence in action. You may lose all you have and all you’re ever going to have. But there’s consequence to inaction too. Some things once seen must be met with action. Like the voice of a kidnapped child. Or the picture of a father with nerve gassed children. The erosion in the human belief that the human purpose on this planet is for others, and that the very cause of strength is for the weak, is far more destructive than any material risk we’ll ever face when we choose to act.

They are the purpose of our strength. But sometimes, it’s easy to forget why we’re strong.

Where’s Aidan? My favorite question on Autism Awareness Day

 

 

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“Where’s Aidan?” It’s a question that gets asked out loud or in my head hundreds of times every day in my house. Aidan is my nine year old, highly energetic, happy, beautiful son. He’s also my minimally verbal, constant flight risk, moderate to severely autistic son. And not knowing where he is for too long usually doesn’t end well. Seven years into this journey, my family looks very different than I would have expected when we started this whole thing.

According to data from 2012, the CDC tells us that one out of every 68 children born today is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. More boys than girls— fourand a half more to be exact. One out of every 41 children born in New Jersey, where Aidan was born, are diagnosed. Those are concerning numbers for prospective parents, even more for those who have kids and are starting to get that dark, alone feeling that their kids are different. Dark and alone are important words when it comes to Autism-it’s where we all start, and some of us stay.

Most of the energy around the autism discussion is around finding “the cause” or “the cure”. And that’s good energy because if we can spare people the outcomes of autism, we should. My boy is not perfect in every way. I’ve been up since 3AM, because that’s when he got up. You can’t get someone back to bed when they don’t understand time or are episodically detached from the fact that they are going to get in trouble if they don’t.  And you can’t go back to sleep because he’s smart enough to go get dressed and take a walk, to Mexico if you let him.  I love him unconditionally, but I would fix him in a second if I could.  So finding causes or cures are important. Except that it’s probably not a cause, or a cure.

If you spend enough time around the autism community you start to realize that it’s not one problem. There’s all kinds, with all kinds of causes, and all kinds of treatments.  So the angry vaccine debates and the frustrated food additive advocates can rage on.  That energy will ultimately lead to something good.  But it’s actually not why I’m writing this, sitting on my son’s floor, now just before 5AM, as he rewinds the same part of The Land Before Time over and over again to watch it, giggling with delight. I’m writing it because it’s Autism Awareness Day.  And I’d like to offer a call to action, not for a cause, not for the kids.  I’m offering a selfish call for help to the selfless— the parents of autistic children.

Seven years ago this fall, I was deployed to Iraq when my wife sent me an email telling me to call her.  I had been gone three months. She usually didn’t do that so I knew something was wrong. I got to the nearest phone and when she picked up I could tell she’d been crying. She told me she had taken Aidan in for an assessment, and the doctor told her, with cold certainty that he was autistic. The lights went out in the building I was in with the word still hanging in the air. Our generator died. Talk about timing.

I ran to another part of the camp where I knew I could find a phone. We talked for a bit, she gave me the details, about how he had stopped talking shortly after I left about how she knew something was wrong before but I wouldn’t listen. I hung up and hurried out of the building as quickly as I could.  I had to get back to where the lights were out quickly before I lost it. When I did, the flood gates opened. As I walked back to our side of the camp, I mourned the life that I just lost and the future we’d planned. I wrapped myself in dark thoughts as a trudged back along the banks of the Euphrates, where men had carried dark, lonely thoughts for millennia.

A mentor of mine once told me that the richest parts of our life are the walks back to the path we were on when something knocks us off it. And he was right because the walk back for me and my family has been a rich one. But it’s also been a long one with lot’s of tail winds. My wife and I have a strong relationship, but the diagnosis and my response to it almost drove our marriage off a cliff. When autism families are open and honest, most will tell you some version of the same thing. We have three graduate degrees between us and an income that allows us to live in a gated community. We can close the resource gap for things like house cleaning laundry, yard work and specialized childcare through money.  We have a great school system in our neighborhood and a strong church with a special needs community walking distance from our house.  And here’s the message I want you walk away with.  We have just about every advantage you could think of as a family with an autistic child. And we barely get by.

I have no idea how in the world a family with any less resources than us has any chance at all. Yet somehow, they find a way, sometimes. But sometimes they don’t.

So here’s my call to action. Someone somewhere in your life is struggling with some function of this journey. I promise you. If you don’t know anyone, then you’re not paying attention. So that’s my first ask. Pay attention and keep an eye out for someone somewhere who may be in need. Here’s my second ask. Help them.

What does help look like? It’s not much. Ask them how they’re doing. And listen. If you want to get your families together, offer to do at their place, it’s easier. And show up on time to things. We have windows for recreation that open and close on their own. Teach your kids how to engage with theirs so that one day they might be able to help care for them and give them a break once in a while. Remember, we’re likely going to be parenting for 50 or 60 years and leaving our kids to someone else after we die. That mountain is best climbed with others.

If you’re a grandparent or an aunt or an uncle, don’t tell them that they’re over reacting and that things will just be fine. They might be—but probably not. They’re not looking for a life’s lesson or hard love. They’re about to get a lifetime of both. And the things parents and siblings of autistic parents say in the minutes hours and days after a diagnosis can be either a great source of strength, or pain for years to come. If you’re a husband and your wife is telling you something is wrong and she wants to get your child tested, listen to her.  And support her. I didn’t and the fact that I left her to do it alone is a regret I’m not putting down any time soon. The great thing about helping autism parents is it really looks a lot like being supportive, and available and loving. And that’s not hard.

What better day to start than Autism Awareness Day…or Saturday…as we call it in our house.

A Sense of Honor

Jim Webb graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1968, 31 years before I did. He served in Vietnam as an infantry officer in the Marine Corps, was wounded twice and received two Purple Hearts. He was awarded the Bronze Star, the Silver Star and the Navy Cross, the second highest honor a Marine Corps Officer can receive behind only the Congressional Medal of Honor. He received that Navy Cross for leading an assault on three enemy bunkers that ultimately ended with him throwing himself in front of a grenade to save his men while continuing to return fire on the enemy. The citation reads like the script of a war movie. Because Jim Webb is a war hero. One of the most decorated to ever graduate from my school .

The novels he wrote told the story of his experiences like no one could. A Sense of Honor was near mandatory reading at Annapolis. And if you’re going to read one book on the Vietnam War, Fields of Fire might be it. His fictional accounts of nonfictional things were nothing short of brilliant. Critics of my writing have called what I’ve managed to put out a cheap copy of Webb’s style. I take any comparison, even derogatory, as a compliment.

Webb served as the Secretary of the Navy and the Assistant Secretary of Defense under Ronald Regan. He served one term as Senator from Virginia. He’s been a member of both the Democratic and Republican parties. And in 2016, he ran a brief and unsuccessful campaign for the presidency. He wrote and sponsored the post 9/11 GI bill that both my wife and I used to graduate from graduate school.

Today, Jim Webb was to be honored as a distinguished graduate of my alma mater. Two days ago, he declined the honor. Because there are people who don’t think that he deserves it.

In 1979, Webb wrote an article for the Washingtonian Magazine titled Women Can’t Fight. In it, he took to task the issue of women serving in combat by way of a focused criticism of the admission of women to the United States Naval Academy. Until a few classmates of mine reached out to me to see if I might support opposition for honoring him, I had no idea the article existed. But they did. Because they believe it had done great harm to them. So I read it.

It starts off classic Webb as he dispassionately paints the brutal picture of the reality of combat while contrasting his vulnerability through the impact it had on him and the men he served with and loved. It then transitions into a lesser version of his intellect where he cites the nature of the differences of men and women. And includes some anecdotal opinions of those enrolled at Annapolis and how they felt about it. And some more anecdote about how soft the school has gotten and what that means for its place in our society. And then he finishes with the typical approach of showing the negative impact it’s having on women. Because the argument isn’t about thinking less of women. It’s about caring for and protecting them. And understanding that this life wasn’t for them.

A woman is a certain type of thing. And combat is a certain type of thing. And they are two types of things not for each other.

The article has more than its fair share of troublingly anachronistic passages, even for forty years ago. I won’t cite them. You can read it yourself. And Webb’s motivation for writing it is something only he can tell you. Though I’d venture a guess that, based on the life he lived around the article, he wrote it because he cared about what was happening. And he believed what he said. He was the gritty war hero telling an increasingly sensitive and progressive society with a Democratic liberal government some hard, conservative truths. It’s a tone that should ring familiar to my generation of vets from Iraq and Afghanistan, none too pleased with more modern progressive leadership.

Admittedly, his decision not to accept the honor to avoid further controversy has relieved me of my conflicted burden to weigh in on what I think the Naval Academy Alumnae Association should do. As he has done in most parts of his life that matter to the public, Jim Webb acted selflessly with an eye towards the greater good. But that doesn’t mean there’s not something to weigh in on. Or no more questions to ask. Because there are.

How should we feel about Jim Webb’s contribution to America based on what he wrote as a 33-year old published author and veteran? Does he get a pass? Or is he no longer a person worthy of our appreciation at all? Or is it somewhere in between? And what if we refuse to allow ourselves the off-ramp that is the common notion that people are complicated and we therefore are allowed to dismiss their shortcomings by way of that particular disclaimer?  What does it all mean?

Well, the answer, for me, is oddly simple. We shouldn’t think anything about how we feel about Jim Webb. Because it doesn’t matter. And he’d likely be the first one to tell you that. What does matter is how we should act in instances where we’ve progressed to those societal inflection points where the fates of groups of people are to be decided by whether or not they should be included as equals in a society. The answer should always be assumed to be yes.

We wrote it down once. And we’ve fought hard to mean it ever since. If someone can do the job, and they want to do the job, and they do what is required of others to do the job, then they get to do the job. It’s not hard to accept. It’s only hard if you make it hard. And making it hard is a choice.

I’ve served in combat zones with all male units. And I’ve served in them with women too. Some women aren’t cut out for it. And neither are some men. But those that are, if they raise their hand, are every bit as worthy as I was.

Our history is full of the regrets of exclusion and absent from those of inclusion. I appreciate nearly everything Jim Webb has done on this planet as good and accretive to a life well lived in a society that’s better off for having him. And so I’d like to help him out and point to a time when someone used their power and influence to show that an entire race or sex or nation of origin could be effectively disqualified as capable, worthy or suited for participation in a portion of society, and that we were all better off for it. But I can’t. Because there aren’t any. Even if we keep trying to do it.

I shouldn’t expect that those hurt by what he wrote to be too forgiving. Nor should I expect that an institution that ignored what he said and has since graduated thousands of women who served honorably in peace and in war to honor him without explanation or consideration for those he hurt. That doesn’t mean I think any less of any of the good he did. That would be as disingenuous as ignoring perspectives of those he hurt.

History is a harsh judge of those who close the door on others. Even if they believed they were closing it for the good of those on both sides.

That’s the lesson here. That’s what matters.

It’s Not Checkers

It’s been more than twenty years since the IBM computer Deep Blue beat Grandmaster Garry Kasparov in a six game challenge of chess. Now, a few decades into a reality where something we’ve created can beat us at a game of strategy, we’re all pretty sure we’re only a few decades away from being enslaved by machines. I’m more skeptical. Or more optimistic I guess, depending on which way you look at it. But there’s quite a bit to learn from the observations you can gather from paying attention to the evolution of machine chess. And not just about chess.

A truly world class chess playing human can look a half dozen or so moves into the future and reasonably predict where the most relevant pieces will be. A computer can go dozens. So the thing that makes a computer better than a human at chess is not in fact it’s ability to ponder consequences to itself and infer the intention of its opponent. What makes the machine better is simply a function of how many simultaneous calculations it can do relative to what a human can. And how much it can remember about the variables of moves it considers. For a computer, that’s all of them. For a human, it’s something less than that.

One of the things you’ll hear, if you pay attention to chess is that commentators will often say things like, “That’s a move no human would make.” Because chess computers not only see more of the future, they care less about the past and present. A computer doesn’t worry if the move looks crazy. And it doesn’t concern itself with how harsh the criticism will be if that move fails. It simply sees that it will likely work. And it makes the move.

The human it’s playing is often so dismayed by the abnormality of the move that they get flustered. And they make mistakes. And even quit. That’s what happened to Kasparov. He conceded a game after a bug in the program made the computer do something stupid. The Grandmaster wrongly assumed it was genius. So he quit. The computer is not bogged down by the troublesome human burdens of risk aversion, doubt or shame. And so for the most inhuman of reasons, the computer is better at winning chess matches against humans than other humans are.

There is one part of chess that computers aren’t better at than humans though. It’s the the first dozen or so moves. What’s called the opening. In fact, computer chess programs are so bad at computing the opening they don’t do it. Because the end outcome is so distant and the variables are near infinite, they won’t even try. Instead it will use a reference database of known openings instead. Because the openings chess players use are some variation of the known openings that humans have learned work most effectively over 15 centuries playing chess. Because even the most powerful computer in the world is no match for the collective learnings of our species. So in that respect, they imitate us.

There’s a reason we’ve been playing chess for as long as we have. There are so many parallels to life. How a computer needs to play it, is one of them. It’s very easy to be bold and uncompromising when you are just a little shrewder than some of the others in the room. And you started the game with the advantage that others handed to you. Say, if you were given a real estate empire. And all you had to do, was punch the guy across the table hard enough and long enough that he conceded that you had the stronger hand. And that you made the rules. You could even be outrageous. Knock people’s foundations out from under them. Get them flustered and outraged. Make them fold when perhaps, they didn’t have to.

And you might find, that gives you success.

But if you start something brand new, for instance, like take on the responsibility of governing the country that’s been most effectively governed for longer than any democracy in the history of governing, perhaps you may want to consider how some of the men who did it before you chose to act. See how they treated people. Practice the same disciplines they did. Follow some of the norms. You might find then, like the computer did, that several centuries of human consciousness is not in fact, less savvy than you are at something so very important.

And perhaps then you might find that you can drain the swamp the way it so needs to be drained. Because those who have given you the power you so sought will fear you less than what they fear they’ll find at the bottom when you drain it.

Or you can go on flubbing the opening. And lose early and often. Because computer chess tells us one other thing about it that is a powerful analogy to life. The scoring systems show that it’s almost never a glaring error that loses the game. It’s the compilation of smaller ones that ultimately erodes one player’s stronger position until they’ve got nothing left.

Like an illegal travel ban that no one needed. Or a healthcare plan that couldn’t be passed. Or a wall that your people don’t care about paid for by funds that your people don’t have.

 

What’s Next?

16 million Americans served during World War II from a country only about 40% as populous as we are today. About half of all working aged men went off to war between 1941 and 1945. So if you were sharing a cab or sitting down for a business lunch or riding in an elevator in 1950, chances were, if you weren’t a vet, the other guy was. There’s a common opinion that what made the Greatest Generation so great was that they fought in the war. And though it’s hard to argue against the enormity of that accomplishment, saving the free people of the world from authoritarian imperialist rule, one could argue that the very next thing that American generation did was every bit as important. Maybe even more.

They went to work.

Vets returning home from WWII came home to one of the greatest eras of productivity the globe had ever seen. They found jobs in the new production economy where one out of every three dollars made in America was made by making something. They built the cars and the neighborhoods that created the American suburbs and the goods that created the American lifestyle most of us today recognize. It wasn’t just industry either. An eye popping 50% of WWII vets started their own businesses. The America they made never existed anywhere in the world in the pre-war era. While the rest of the world dug out of the rubble, America, already at the top of the economic heap, was spared by geography from the destruction of the war. So she hurled herself forward with the energy of a developing nation. And the greatest generation lapped the world.

That was then.

Today, there’s a very different generation of veterans in America. After 15 years of armed conflict, in a country now a little over twice as populated as the one that fought WWII with a war that spanned three times as long, the number of military aged men in the workforce that served in Iraq and Afghanistan is far less. About a quarter million women served too. But for the sake of comparison, we can look at the men and say what was once one in two, is now one in thirty.

There’s another common opinion in America today that we owe a great debt of gratitude to the one in thirty vets that served. I’m one. And I agree. But there’s something uneven about being such a rare commodity. There’s something that happens after a decade or so of being the only guy in a crowded room who served in a far off place doing far off things the other people in that room only saw in movies. You start to live with your eyes firmly fixed on the rear view mirror. Your whole life starts to orbit around the interesting and unique identifier of being a vet. And you start to think, a little bit too much, that the world should care more about you and what you have to say or what you have to offer than others. And that’s a problem.

What made the greatest generation so great was that when they came home from the war, they didn’t spend much time staring backwards at what they had just done-save the world. They didn’t come home and pine about a simpler America that made more sense to their “American” sense of self. One of farms and tradesmen and urban mills. One more familiar but with far less opportunity to make the world better. They moved on. They started families. And lives. And businesses. And they built the modern world. It’s hard to spend much time feeling like you’re owed something more when a dozen other guys on the block did the same as you did. It’s hard to link your unique identity to such a ubiquitous thing. So you go out and you make your next one.

Today feels different.

I may be alone here, but I’ve had enough of stern, oft bearded vets in videos with a tag line that sounds something like “this vets got a message for…” being lobbed over the Facebook wall by folks who mean well or seek to wear their political ideology in the form of patriotic military appreciation. Those are fine, I guess. And maybe a bit useful if the message that service takes commitment and sacrifice hasn’t quite sunk in somehow yet. But I feel like it has. And we’re starting to wander into a more dangerous territory of entitlement. And it’s time we vets dealt with a hard reality.

It’s this:

The war is over. It has been at scale in Iraq for seven years. We’ve had more troops in South Korea than we’ve had in Afghanistan for three years. It might start up again. But those of us that left the service of arms aren’t fighting it. The next generation will with a handful of our buddies hanging around in the senior ranks. And America’s focus and appreciation should rightly turn towards them if it goes that way. For the rest of us, it’s time to move on. And it’s time to stop focusing on the question of what the country owes us for our service. And time to start asking more important ones that actually have a chance at making our future, and in turn America, great again. Ask yourself this:

What’s next?

My generation started the war. I’m 40. We’re not kids any more. If our life is about that war, then we’re wrong. And we need to start doing something about it. It’s time.

If you haven’t already, go back to school. Use the greatest college funding program America has ever seen and get a degree in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math). The world needs science more than ever before now. The slow growth economy that has so many of us wandering around in the wilderness telling stories about Ramadi is here because we haven’t figured out how to drive the next world altering innovation. Think locomotion or manned flight or nuclear energy. Think something besides just computers. We haven’t had one of those in 80 years. I still get from point A to point B in the same thing my grandfather did. And burn the same things for fuel. Science is going to save our country one day from being eaten by places like China and India who can make last century’s goods cheaper. So it’s time we started treating scientists and mathematicians with the level of gratitude we treat vets. Maybe we vets can help that along a bit by being both.

If that’s not your thing, go start a business. The mechanics of it are easier than ever. I started two last year. That’s what half of the greatest generation did. Today, less than five percent of vets are starting their own businesses. So, maybe we might want to try a little less pontificating of our stern values and start spending more time thinking of ideas for a start up. I get it. Talking about making America great again is easier and more gratifying in today’s social media world. But it doesn’t actually do anything.

If business ideas aren’t your thing, then ask  yourself this question. How do the skills that you have help the machine? I don’t mean the figurative one that is a thriving America. Like the economist Tyler Cowen when he asked the same question first in his book Average is Over, I mean the literal one. The computer. How do the skills that you have help the computer? There’s a divide in America. It’s clear as day. It’s different than the political or racial or socio-economic one. It’s not urban or rural. Or north and south. But it’s there. And it’s widening. The most material divide between Americans today, is how you answer the question, how do I help the machine?

Can you build it? Can you design how it works? Can you analyze what it produces? Can you use it to do things better? Can you explain it and sell it? Can you produce it? Can you teach others with it? Can you entertain people with it?

Can you manage teams that do any of that?

If you answered yes to any of those, you will prosper for the next twenty years. If you answered no, then it’s likely that what you do has been replaced by the machine. And you’re going to have less opportunity than you would have in the past. It’s not fair. But that’s the deal. It’s how the free market that so many nostalgic Americans love, works. So go do that thing that your military training taught you. Adapt and overcome. Or piss moan and complain about the old days and get left behind.

The reality is a bit painful. America has plenty of money. The world has endless unskilled labor. We’ve got plenty of government. And plenty of people who protect and serve. But we don’t have enough people that can answer yes to any of those questions above or can enter into professional fields in science or will start their own businesses. So those that can will matter more to America during the rest of our lives than our past service will.

So remember your days in the past with the pride and honor you deserve. And mourn those we left behind. If you’ve got wounds that won’t heal, go get help. It’s never been more available. But if you want the future in the country you thought you were fighting for, it’s not the one in the rear view mirror. America isn’t going backwards. She never has. It’s time to move on to the next thing and get back to work. And remember that thing the military taught us.

No one owes us anything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The road that lies ahead

I spent a summer some years back in the waterways near the northern end of San Francisco Bay, where the Napa River marshland meets up with Vallejo. The sloughs, as they’re called, were ideal for getting ready for the waterways of the Euphrates River Delta in Southern Iraq. That’s why we were there. Because that’s where we figured we were going.

That summer I packed up my boats and my team and all our weapons and gear and loaded them onto tractor trailers and hauled them up 500 miles of interstate from San Diego. I was 26. And it was my first time doing it. And as the detachment commander, I was in charge and responsible for all of it.

When you’re in that line of work in Special Operations, the small boat teams, and you’re working with the “boat guys” as they’re called, you do it all yourself. You don’t hire a shipping company or a driver to haul your crap. You start in point A. And you get it all to point B. And when you get there, you set up shop and get to work. Most will tell you that the getting there part is often the hardest part of the mission. So when we train, we train the whole way, from the time you kiss your wife goodbye on the way out the door, to the time she hands you the screaming baby when you walk back in a month later.

The key thing to remember when you’re on that kind of haul is that you stick together and you keep moving. No matter what happens. You just keep going through the brutal L.A. rush hour traffic. Keep going over the grape vine pass through the mountains on the I-5. Don’t stop for long.

Not even when something bad happens. Especially when something bad happens. Because it will.

This time, we burnt out the brakes on one of our trailers and had to coast off an exit and roll into a field to let them cool off. The look on the face of the 19-year old kid in my detachment from Idaho, who was driving, when my chief and I rolled up next to him in the chase van to tell him to slow down was priceless. After getting an earful from Chief through the wind between open windows, without blinking or any sense of panic, he barked back, “You first. I got no breaks.”

We sat for an hour in a dirt field with the stink of burnt brake pads in the air laughing about it. It scared me to death though. The weight of responsibility was new for me. And I didn’t want to fail. Or worse, get anyone killed.

Something happened not too long after that’s stuck with me nearly fifteen years later. Cruising up the highway in one of the long rural stretches of the great agricultural mecca of America that is Central California, we passed three cars that had just been in a gnarly accident. Two of them were smashed up badly. The other less so. There were suitcases and boxes strewn all over the side of the road. People were wandering around in a fog, disoriented, hazy. There was a woman holding a crying child. A man with a bloody nose sat next to one of the wrecks staring out in to space.

No one looked like they were too badly injured. At least not from a half mile away at 70 miles per hour. But the police weren’t there yet. And we were fifty miles from civilization. The first thing that popped into my mind was, man, I’m glad we weren’t in the middle of that.

My leading petty officer in one of the trailers popped into my ear over the radio.”You see that LT?”

“I see it.” Was all I said back. And we kept trucking. I heard him key the mike on the radio again, but he didn’t say anything else.

A hundred miles up the road when we stopped for gas, the door of the one truck swung open. My leading petty officer charged across the parking lot at me tattoos and muscle flying. He jammed his finger into my chest.

“Why the fuck didn’t you stop LT?”

I didn’t know what he was talking about. In the two hours since, I’d forgotten all about it. I’d forgotten about the accident. I’d forgotten that we drove past people who may have been in need with three trucks full of food and medical supplies. At least four of my guys were trained EMTs. One was a hospital corpsman. And we were all field medical trained. I’d forgotten.

But he hadn’t.

The truth was, I didn’t forget. Because it never really occurred to me to stop. We weren’t obligated. I assumed they were fine. They looked fine. But most importantly, I was laser focused on the road ahead of me and the destination I had been assigned to reach and the very real risk that the road and the environment had just shown me when we burned out of the mountains. I’d closed out everything from my mind that wasn’t about keeping my team safe and getting us to our destination.

For me there was never any decision to be made.

It was one of the great teachable failures of my life. And in the 14 or so years since it happened, I’ve thought about it often.

As bad as I feel about that decision, or lack of, and as much as I’ve tried to make up for it with my actions ever since, there was more than just my own character failure at play all those years ago on that highway. I was behaving like a human.

In 1973, psychologists John Darly and Daniel Batson conducted the experiment that would eventually be known even outside psychology academic circles as the Princeton Good Samaritan Study. Darly and Batson took a bunch of students studying theology at the Princeton Theological Seminary School and gave them a questionnaire to establish their level of religiosity. Then they sent them to another building to go do one of a number of different tasks that varied by participant. One of the tasks, ironically, was to give a talk on the story of the good Samaritan from the New Testament. On the way, the team placed someone in their paths who needed help. Before they left though, they gave the students differing levels of urgency. Some were told they were late and had to hurry. Some were told they needed to hurry or they’d be late. And some were told they had plenty of time.

What they found was interesting. And has served as a bit of an anchor for me in understanding some important limits about people.

Darly and Batson found that the only thing that really mattered, relative to whether or not these seminary students wanted to help, was whether or not they were in a hurry. It didn’t matter how religious they were. Or even if they’d just prepared a talk on what the bible says about the virtues of helping others. Students who thought they had plenty of time usually helped. About 2/3 of them stopped what they were doing and helped the stranger. Students that thought they were late, even really religious ones who were about to give a talk on what Jesus said about helping others, didn’t. Nine out of ten times they just walked past. Once they even stepped over the person laying in need. Because we’re humans.

We’re wired to get where where going and get done what we want to get done. We are not wired to stop and help. The road ahead of us is all consuming. We keep our eyes on the ball. We put one foot in front of the other and get going. We’ve got shit to do and places to go. And we’ve got to put America first…

You get the point.

There’s a trap here though. It’s this. I can tell you today that we got to San Francisco on time. And that we completed the training mission. I don’t remember much about the day we got there. I remember nothing about the hour we got there. Chances were, we stretched our legs, bullshitted a little about the drive and then got to work. And, if that hour happened an hour later, it wouldn’t have mattered much. And if it had to happen that way because we helped people in need, no one would have given a rip. And if they did, they would have been wrong.

Here’s the lesson: When it comes to helping people who need help, our default setting needs to be consciously set on yes. Because if it’s not, we’re programmed for no. And if we throw something into our very near consciousness that feels like danger or fear, like losing your breaks in an 18 wheeler while screaming down a 6% incline, or stories on the news about people who look like the people in need harming the people that look like us, then we get even less willing. We close our doors. We turn inward. And we turn our backs. No matter how good a people we think we are. We are human.

And then we do the next very human thing. We regret.

Some of the deepest regrets we have as people, or as a people are when we’ve refused to recognize the needs of others. When we’ve refused to recognize their need as legitimate, their cause as worthy or their type as human. And we either end up regretting them materially because the outcomes are materially bad. Or we regret them because the pain and suffering of others, ignored, over time erodes our humanity.

There’s power in submitting to the painful truth that other people’s problems are worth solving. Not just when they can’t solve them alone. But when we can.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abraham and George

Last week I was up in L.A. to do a podcast with the wonderful Julia Harris Walker for her project on women in tech, The Other 50 Percent. I’m clearly not a woman. But I do work some in tech. And I promise it’s relevant. I had a blast.

While I was up there I had the chance to attend a reading of George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo. It’s an absolutely beautiful novel that just debuted at #1 on the NYT Best Seller List. And George is an amazingly generous talent who makes me want to quit writing altogether because he’s proof of life on planets far outside my creative reach.

Lincoln in the Bardo is a story of the spiritual world Abraham Lincoln encounters one night while visiting his son Willie’s grave in the days after his passing. It reminded me of one of the first things I wrote on this site, back when I’m pretty sure my wife was the only one reading it. And only because I made here.

I figured I’d share it again. I hope you like it.

From April, 2015:

In February of 1862, Abraham Lincoln’s son William Wallace Lincoln died at the age of 11. They called him Willie. And he was just like his father. Somewhere between the battles of Fort Donelson and Shiloh, Lincoln lost and buried a child. His fragile wife Mary locked herself away from her husband and other young son Tad, who was also gravely ill with the same Typhoid that took Willie. The President continued on as head of state and Commander in Chief through a personal darkness that continued through the war.  

Abraham, standing over his son,“My poor boy. He was too good for this earth. God has called him home. I know that he is much better off in heaven, but then we loved him so. It is hard, hard to have him die!”

It was hard to have him die. 

During my last deployment to Iraq I wandered into a similar darkness. A few weeks after I waved goodbye to him on the tarmac in Coronado, my middle son, then two and a half, stopped talking. He fell into a listless, unresponsive state, barely aware of his surroundings. Two months into the deployment, he was diagnosed with severe autism. My wife emailed me the news. I read it at my desk in the operations center of the task force I was attached to. Shortly after, my Commanding Officer sent me home for three weeks to be with my family to save what was left of us. 

Even with that break, the pressure was too much. I went back to war. And when I finally returned home, I was a shell. Hollow. Listless. Numb. 

My boy never really came back. And neither did I. Not for a long time.

I can make few comparisons between myself and Abraham Lincoln. I only aim to provide context for our analogous pain. Lincoln had not the luxury of time nor relief from responsibility-those three pure weeks of grief and pain that I had. I don’t know if he was broken like me on the inside. But he kept on. 

“There sat the man, with a burden on his brain at which the world marvels — bent now with the load at both heart and brain.” Nathanial Parker wrote. 

He soldiered forth for three more years of death, doubt and crisis, eventually delivering our nation from its own destruction, before realizing his own. 

History gets the facts right most of the time. It sometimes gets the motivation or strategy of its cast of characters right too. It rarely remembers their humanity though. It tells us that FDR had been paralyzed by illness from the waist down and served his presidency from a wheel chair. But it does a lesser job to tell us what he was feeling when, at 39, he suddenly lost the ability to do most things that he had been able to do his whole life. And what dread and regret he felt in the quiet times when he remembered what he once was. It tells us George Washington cast off the yoke of British imperialism in the name of liberty. But says much less about the sleepless nights he faced as the full weight of his actions sank in when the future had not yet been written into our textbooks. 

History tells us that between 1861 and 1865, 600,000 men lost their lives to combat or disease while Abraham Lincoln, through force of will and genius preserved the union and eradicated slavery in America. It tells us less about the broken heart that beat in his chest while he did it.

A few weeks before he was assassinated, shortly after Lee’s surrender, he described a dream that he had to an associate. Abraham had dreamed that he saw a funeral in the White House and had assumed it was his own.  

History uses that story to illustrate a sort of premonition or acceptance Abraham had to his own resigned fate. I know the truth too well though. In some far less glorious or meaningful way, I lived it. The dream was the first of many sleepless nights that John Wilkes booth spared him as the stress of crisis and personal loss drained from his conscience. A darkness, for a time, worse than death.

We’ve asked enough times, “what if he lived?” for our sake. But I can’t stop asking it for his.