In the process, I met some amazing people. Consequently, my life has been enriched by their acquaintance. At most, I only heard a snippet of each of their stories, but at some level I felt like I had know them forever. Even in the silence we shared and in the things left unsaid, somehow we intuitively knew something of the path each had taken. For some, the journey has been filled with arduous difficulties and scattered emotional and familial landmines all along the way. For others, following the initial sense of overwhelming grief and the undeniable perpetual pain of not knowing, the path hasn’t been quite so debilitating.
Twenty-six month ago when I started writing my daily blog, it was with the intent to capture the adventure or memory inherent in each day. I guess you could say, I made a commitment to myself to craft a memory, chronicle a thought or capture a reflection of something that made the day significant.
There was a method to my madness. I wanted a venue to capture and record the experience. For most of my years, my life has been lost in living. I am sixty-nine years old. How can that be? Day before yesterday, I was a young adult. When I look in the mirror, I don’t see the person I think of as myself. I see someone much older. Where did it all go? What did I learn along the way that contributes to a sense of well-being?
Far to often, I routinely moved from “this to that” without ever purposefully taking the time to fully process the experiences that came my way. Consequently, I failed to reflect on the life lessons that should have been self-evident in the process. If you choose to skip the process, you also skip the lessons.
It should come as no surprise to many that I am far more comfortable chronicling stories that prompt laughter. I don’t even mind laughing at my own expense. Regardless of the source, laughter is good for the soul. It also promotes good physical and emotional health. In addition it ensures you live with a sense of community. Haven’t you heard it said: “Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone?”
If you’ve been reading my recent blogs, you are already aware that much of the focus of my writing has been more serious than I routinely provide. I haven’t figuratively brought down the house with laughter. For those of you looking for a laugh, I apologize. Yet to attempt to crack jokes when my thoughts are elsewhere seems like an empty facade. I have to be more transparent than that or I do myself an injustice. I may do you an injustice as well. I’d much prefer to be liked with all my flaws and shortcomings than to hide behind a façade of make-believe and pretense.
Maybe I don’t like exposing my vulnerability. It is like peeling the layers of skin off an onion. At what point do you wish you hadn’t been that open and honest? I’d much prefer you to think, “I have it all together” and that “I’m as steadfast as the Rock of Gibraltar”. Yet truthfully, that sometimes is true for me and sometimes it’s not so true. I put my trousers on one pant’s leg at a time just like everyone else.
Don’t panic! I have it together enough that I’m going to be okay regardless of what tomorrow may bring. I recently told someone, “I’d much rather have the truth than deal with uncertainty”. That probably reminds you of the line from A Few Good Men. “You Can’t Handle The Truth” is a memorable quote from the 1992 military court drama film A Few Good Men.
We lost more than a few good men and women in Vietnam. Many of the deaths could have been avoided. Col. Jack Broughton flew more than 200 jet-fighter missions in the Korean and Vietnam Wars and received the Air Force Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor.
“In retirement, Colonel Broughton (pronounced BROH-ton) wrote widely on his combat exploits and his anger at President Lyndon B. Johnson, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara and the Air Force for limitations that he believed cost pilots’ lives and destroyed any chance America had of winning the Vietnam War.
“We were poorly utilized, we were hopelessly misdirected and restricted, and we were woefully misused by a chain of stagnant high-level civilian and military leadership” that lacked fortitude in a “war that they ineptly micromanaged,” Colonel Broughton wrote in Rupert Red Two (2007), a memoir whose title drew on his call sign while a young military pilot.
Citing restrictions on hitting important targets like major ports, antiaircraft-missile sites under construction and MIG fighters on the ground during the bombing campaign called Rolling Thunder, Colonel Broughton lamented ‘what was probably the most inefficient and self-destructive set of rules of engagement that a fighting force ever tried to take into battle.’
“Let bygones be bygones”, doesn’t work when it comes to factually looking at the missteps that were made in the Vietnam Conflict. Why not record the facts of history as they really were? Sugar coating and glossing over the injustices done by those in places of power and control thwart the cause of freedom.
Give me the truth. I can handle the truth. What I can’t handle the veil of secrecy that withholds the truth from the American public.
All My Best!
Don