It is hard to know how you have changed until you come home and are put back into your old life. I think there have been changes at home too, but not as big as I feared might be. I have changed a lot more more than I thought that I had. Mostly in my attitude and self confidence.
I thought today about how more open I am to doing any job. I have always thought that I would make a good teacher and would enjoy the job, but I have alway been hesitant in “being a teacher”. I guess if I was honest I thought that being a teacher would be a wast of my potential. I don’t feel like that at all anymore. Before now I have always wondered if I would be able to really accomplish something in my life. A lot of potential career options have always been open to me but I thing that I was not open to them because I didn’t see them as a way to lead to personal accomplishment. I realize not that I don’t worry about that anymore. I really feel that what I am doing now is a personal accomplishment worthy of a lifetime. I have made the decision to stay in the military and become an officer which means possibly more deployments in the future. I never anticipated that these decisions and my service in Iraq would bring me such a sense of accomplishment. I don’t care if all I ever do from this point out it just teach, or just fix cars or just drive trucks or just....anything. I am not worried about success anymore because I feel that I have already proven myself; to myself as well as others. I think that I can now just go to work doing anything and just do a good job an be happy with myself. I don’t think I realized how much I doubted myself and how serving in Iraq would give me confidence.
Not only am I more confident but I have learned some other lessons that have helped me feel more like an adult. Julie and I have talked a lot about what makes a person an adult and what concepts a person must understand before they can be considered a mature adult. I think that just as we measure the physical and cognitive progress of children as they grow up we can measure the cognitive progress of young adults to see how they are developing into adults. Just as there are milestones in the growth of young children, there are milestones in the maturation of youth into competent adults.
One of the first that we have discussed is something that happened to me on my mission and something that happens to Julie around the time we had children. That is the realization that my parents were just ordinary people just doing the best that they could to raise us. I could see them for imperfect people that they are and yet not be angry about it but draw closer to them because of it. I felt that I truly understood my parents. With the arrival of children and the added responsibilities of raising a family those feelings have only been reaffirmed. I think that this is one of the first milestones of adulthood: true independence from your parents.
I reached another milestone while I was in Iraq. Like the first one, this one seemed to come as a light bulb turning on in my head. While I was pondering wether or not to re-enlist I had the realization that sometimes in life we need to do difficult things. My whole life I have tried to find the path that would lead to the most comfortable life. I misunderstood the old adage that you should do for a job something that you would do for free and then you would never really work in your life. I have been searching in vein for that career that would just be roses and cake every day and bring me true joy. The problem is that I have avoided doing anything unpleasant. The fear of doing anything unpleasant has kept me from doing anything important. I realized that I was wrong to try and avoid difficult and unpleasant things. This life is not supposed to be easy. I knew that I needed difficult things in my life to give it purpose and to keep me always growing and improving myself. Since I have realized these things, really realized them and internalized them, I have found a comfort and a joy in my life that I would never have thought could exist in such difficult circumstances. I really have come to like my job in Iraq and feel that I can do anything and not let my job get me down. I feel that this realization of the reality of life and the importance of embracing the difficult things of life is another huge milestone in my maturation. I have often thought that I don’t feel like an adult. I think that with this I have taken a step closer to feeling like a true man. I hope that it isn’t fleeting. I hope that once I get home and get back into the routine of ordinary life that I don’t forget this lesson. But the way that I am actually looking forward in a way to my return to Iraq and the way I have positive feelings about the work that I am doing there I have confidence that it is a real change in my attitude that will have staying power even after I come home. That is good for my family and good for me.
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4 comments:
It definitely sounds like an adult speaking.
This is good, Josh, do you mind if I forward it to some friends?
Be safe out there!
You can forward it to anyone.
The very fact that paradigms exist and we spend time trying to discover and explain them should tell us that we're not in Kansas anymore! It's simply not as simple as the post dubya dubya two years where you completed your education and went to work somewhere for the duration of your career. Learning is lifelong. We continually reinvent ourselves to stay competitive in this ever changing world where somebody keeps moving the target we were aiming for, and the pace continues to increase. Independence from parents is key, as is recognizing how very mortal they are. Loving them in spite of, or because of, those imperfections are also key. Obtaining that symbiotic state, balancing our lives between those of our parents and our children, for me defines the achievement of that enlightened state. But to maintain such a harmonious state would be too easy without also having to balance a career (and the parent/child fractal-like microcosmic relationship of boss/subordinates!), home teaching, callings, home maintenance and every other time/life draining activity. Or do those enrich life instead, and if we simply had better balance on that tight-rope then we wouldn't fear falling (or failing).
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