So it is once more The Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month. The day the Guns of August fell silent and the killing stopped for a time. A day to reflect. A day of regrets.
I have dreamed of a military career since before I can remember. At first these were of course childish dreams. But as time progressed the dreams changed, grew more mature and more specific. As a child I read Tom Clancy novels and war memoirs. As a college student I scoured the BuPers website to gather information on what it was like to be a junior officer in the three communities which most interested me (Naval Flight Officer, as I did not have the eyes to be a pilot; Intelligence because spying always intrigued me; Surface Warfare because I'm a son of a son of a sailor, Destroyermen all, and have hungered in my soul to conn a Destroyer or Frigate in a storm at sea since I was eight). I bought the Naval Officers Guide (it taunts me from a shelf behind me now), read the Service Etiquette Guide, got a subscription to Proceedings. I even took the entrance test for Officer Candidate School and blew the doors off. But through it all, the desire, the hunger, wasn't enough to make me get off my ass and not be fat. I came close, once, at the end of college. But I faltered then like I always do, blamed it on a bad break up when it was really my utter lack of any moral backbone, and chubbed back up. Even 9/11 couldn't get me to man up, and I hadn't even gained most of the weight back at that point. My country has been at war for nigh on a decade, was attacked on our home soil, and that was insufficient to shake my lethargy. And so I wonder. Deep down, am I a coward? Is that why I could never stick to it, never lose the weight. Because then I would have no excuse but cowardice. That questions haunts me. The answer matters little. In practice I am a pathetic thing, might as well be a coward.
Samuel Johnson says "every man thinks meanly of himself for never having been a soldier, or never having gone to sea." I suppose it counts double for never having gone to be a solider on the sea? That quotation could be my epitaph. I think very meanly about myself. I just got a big promotion at work, a validation of my efforts. But it tastes of ash in my mouth when I see a soldier in uniform on the street. There goes a better man than I will ever be I think to myself. What I do doesn't matter, doesn't change anything. I serve no higher purpose than feeding my overstuffed face. God gave me great gifts, and I have squandered them.
