November 29, 2003
Only Slaves Are Happy (Precursor)
I’m driving back to Fort Drum right now in a rental car with Willy and Kyle, another team leader from his platoon. We had a few days off for Thanksgiving that I spent in the city and in New Paltz. Trying to decide how to spend this time off can be a very difficult decision. Your friends and family are eager to see you in situations like this and determining who you want to spend it with can be hard. I have family in Westhampton Beach, but I opted to skip the family thing for Thanksgiving and just visited my sister and a few friends simply so I could have most the time to myself. I did the turkey dinner thing with Ian and Theresa in New Paltz. Having friends that are incredible chefs is right up there with having mechanic, doctor and lawyer friends. Ian and T, I can never thank you enough. As selfish as it might sound to forgo seeing loved ones, I really wanted to use this time to unwind a little and not spend all of it riding trains and buses and sleeping in guest beds which, frankly, can make taking time off more stressful than whatever it is you’re supposedly taking time off from. Mom, you’ll probably not want to read this next part. Skip to the next paragraph. To be perfectly honest, I truly needed a large block of time where I could masturbate freely. When you’re a single guy, autoeroticism is an enormous and regimented part of your life. Living in a tiny room with three other dudes can really put a kink in your self-love life. And God bless free internet porn. Add a broadband internet connection and you have a true Information Age malady: attention deficit disorder porn addiction.
Even though I’ve only been gone for about two months, it still felt kind of strange to go back to New Paltz and see that life goes on whether I’m there are not. Walking from the bus station, I saw a large crowd of students milling around outside a bar and I couldn’t help but indulge in a degree of self-pity thinking that right now they have no idea that a few days ago I was freezing my ass off riding shotgun in a Humvee gunship going through ambush drills. My leadership issues have absolutely no impact on them, they couldn’t care less if I’m not getting the respect I need from my team or that I have moments of self-doubt about imminently seeing combat. I thought about the other guys that go home to their wives and girlfriends and how unlike them I’m part of this demographic of soldiers that seem to be permanant bachelors. Dwelling on thoughts like this can cause one to easily slip into an introspective coma of sorts. Then the questions kick in. Why am I in the Army? Why am I in the infantry? Why am I alone? What’s the meaning of it all, blah blah blah. I always tell people that if there is only one thing that they remember about me, remember this phrase: Only slaves are happy. My tenth grade English teacher, Mr. Wood, told me this, paraphrasing Tolstoy or Doestoevesky, I forget which. I know that this is an obviously cynical and depressing thing to tell people, but it’s an idea that I think I’ve pondered more than just about anything else in my life. This corporeal dispensation we call mortality is all about choice, about volition. This is how we define freedom, the ability to have choice. But oddly, choice is what causes us so much pain. How often have you heard someone say, “I had no choice?” expressing an apparent release from accountability? Only once circumstance dictates how we must choose, do we seem to be happy. We seem to spend so much time passively making decisions, usually just wandering down the path of least resistance, until we no longer have any meaningful choice other than survival. I’ve literally gotten to the point where I have had no food before I’ve put my mind to earning money. Who hasn’t “chosen” to waste time with friends rather than work on a term paper until there’s one day left and you have eighteen pages to write. Ask any student, it’s amazing what can be done with a deadline, five hours till sunrise and No-Doze. When it gets to this point, you do what you have to because you have no choice, or at least that’s what we tell ourselves. Granted there are people that may “choose” to blow the paper off altogether, fail the class, get kicked out of school and then ultimately find that they have “chosen” to spend all the money they earn working at the local diner on beer and weed.
I’m no better than anyone else. I chose to enlist. I chose to re-enlist. Hell, I volunteered to go to Iraq. Why would I do such a thing? I have a few answers of varying honesty. Mostly I want to expand my human experience and this is an easy way to experience some of the most extreme limits of mortality. I want to contribute to something bigger and more meaningful than myself. I want to give back to my country. I want to physically contribute something positive to solving a problem rather than acting like I can solve all the world’s problems from my couch. I love the guys I work with and I love the comraderie. I want money for school. I want to kill someone just so people will shut up and stop asking me if I have. Regardless of the reasons, I’m here and overall I have been very happy with the time that I’ve served. I’m to the point now that I can’t imagine my life without being a soldier. I’m not particularly enthusiastic about the military in general, it’s completely counter to my personality. I don’t know a damned thing about military history, I don’t own any military regalia aside from a book bag with Airborne wings embroidered on it, I have zero military t-shirts. I’d be lying if I said that the Army isn’t a big part of who I am, but I’d like to think that it’s really not. It’s not who I am, it’s not truly a part of my identity, it’s just something I do. Then this begs the question of “who am I”, or what really is the basis of identity? Like anyone, I guess I’m just trying to find myself.
See what I mean? Give an infantryman too much time off and he starts to ask, “What am I doing here?” and then he posts poorly thought out quasi-philosophical blog entries. I was much more content freezing my balls off riding in that Humvee, a happy slave.
October 10th, 2005 at 10:52 pm
Was just “reviewing” here Jason. Its now October 10,2005 and you have published your first book and you are hitting the TV shows bigtime and scoring points with beautiful soledad OBrien. If you knew when you wrote the above that you would be close enough to her to smell her EsteLauder, you’d never have to dial up to view porn for willywhackintime.
Time changes all men and you have made the metamorpohisis in style Pal.
October 11th, 2005 at 9:33 pm
That was interesting, but scary.
October 23rd, 2005 at 12:06 am
I can most definitely relate to everything you have to say with one exception. Don’t be in a hurry to kill someone. I am not speaking from experience here, just from second hand experience and killing someone is a life changing event up there, maybe even surpassing the birth of your first child.
If circumstances place you in a position to have to take a life (and given your circumstances it is going to happen sooner or later) don’t hesitate, but know that it will change you forever.
Best of luck. Keep your head down and take care of yourself and your guys.
November 4th, 2005 at 11:26 am
it is right?
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November 4th, 2005 at 11:30 am
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November 6th, 2005 at 7:56 pm
FNA, J.
November 9th, 2005 at 9:36 pm
Good read.
Lawk Salih
http://www.lawksalih.com
December 29th, 2005 at 11:19 am
A human being is responsible for his acts. Therefore, you must give somewhat more reflection to what you are about. You do not kill someone just because it is in the job description – of course you can – but then are you a man?
January 2nd, 2006 at 9:44 am
Nobody goes off to war to kill but to help other countries less off than us. Im a Disabled American Veteran and former US Marine and yes we were trained to kill but for a reason. This doesn’t mean we will, only if our lives are in a conflict that there is no other choice. A man is only a man if he can make the correct choice of helping fix the problem. My thoughts and prayers are with you and all soldiers for a safe return and mission well done.
Ciao Neil C.
January 3rd, 2006 at 10:09 pm
I can relate to your slight cynisizm. Your honesty is refreshing. Damn shame one needs to go through hell just to understand how spoiled the rest of us really are. I empathize with your plight, and pray for your well-being, for whatever prayer is worth.
March 3rd, 2006 at 11:45 pm
I hate you boys and love you (as a whole) at the same time. What I can’t do is figure out if i love to hate you or hate to love you. Nevertheless, there’s something comfortable with the confident attitude, even though it may have tones of apathy, cynicism, or ignorance. I still thank you for giving the rest of us something to relate with. It’s often the only thing I re-read to keep in touch. Another comment I read was between soldiers with one asking the other, “why do you read all of these books about Iraq when you’re here, in the middle of all of it?” It seems to be a rhetorical question to the receiving end of the inquiry, doesn’t it? You just do, you need to. I would venture to guess that for interested civilians, it is as well… and since we have less in common than soldiers, we’re more interested in ways to find connections, particularly when friends and loved ones are so beyond our own, personal pail.
March 19th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
Wow…. That hits really close to home….my experience was almost the same…..funny….it seems that ive had almost the exact same thoughts on occasion…thanks for writing them down….. Dan. Team Leader. E 1-163 INF. OIF3. Its good to be back home.
April 21st, 2006 at 8:31 pm
I just finished the book and really enjoyed it. I am an O-4 in the Air Force and I know many of my colleagues would be more critical. Congrats on doing a great job on the book.
July 25th, 2006 at 10:16 pm
Oh,my friend,artually,you’re lucky.
Everyone has their own choice about their lives.
When you choice your way,don’t be regrect,spend your time and your money in it.
This year,we have to pass the Entrance Examination For Colleage.Then, I passed and get a very high score.The score ensure me to go to a famous military school.But after checking my eyesight,I was refused.I was so sad and cried all night.I will never forget the day when I was refused.I admired you could have an experience in the army thought we come from different countries.Regardless the war’s meanning in history,you have done what you should do.
June 24th, 2007 at 8:36 am
i’ve been going through your blogs..don’t know if you’ve read a comment of mine..
What I have gathered so far on the informations that i have come across about the war on Iraq and Lebanon side…what the war is really about…and then coming across your blogs. Conclusion..there are so many distorted truths to all this conflict.
Have we come closer to solving the problems of reducing casualties of the young and innocent and any closer to liberate them a life of freedom and free choice?
Do we really need to use weapons to liberate humanity?
Our minds and hearts are the ones that will actually liberate us…
Surely as humans we are intelligent enough to know that..and it is actually going against Tao to go into war..
“An eye for an eye makes the world go blind…”
Maybe we should look in the mirror more often and really take in what we look at…flesh and blood just like everyone else.
I would like to get in contact with you as I am very fascinated and interested in the way you think..
September 13th, 2007 at 11:42 am
I can definetily understand needing self time after being in that situation