So this is what happens after the fact…
Fashion Valley, San Diego, CA with Lola and Mom; Diamondhead Cove, Honolulu, Hawaii with Dad, Josh, and I; P-3 RIMPAC mixer-Australia, Japan, Korea, United States-Dad, Josh, and I; Olomana Peak Hike with Danielle overlooking the western coast of Oahu-Kailua, Hawaii
I just spent nine days in California and thirteen days in Hawaii…I can’t believe that it’s already been three weeks since I got home. In hindsight, my initial emotions upon returning back to the States were excitement, mixed with nervousness, and a general sense of feeling overwhelmed. In addition, I was stressed to be back because there was so much to do from checking back into our deployed command, to returning gear, to consolidating luggage and gear from different places I had stored them in California, to spending time with friends and family, to preparing for Hawaii and going back to Italy, to beginning to think about next summer, etc…Lots of thoughts, tasks, activity, and anticipation…
Now, I’m back in Ijamsville, MD in the house that I grew up in during high school. My true home. I feel different being in this house this time around…I look at my high school picture on the wall from ten years ago-I’m definitely a different person than that naive girl in that picture. Am I tainted? Maybe. More guarded? Definitely. Experienced in life? In a sense yes, but I still have tons to learn…My perspective on life has changed a bit…The little things tend to not bother me as much, but I am definitely easily irritated by people who are so blessed and still have so much to complain about in this country.
I sat next to an entrepreneur on the airplane today who broke into the real estate industry back in the 70’s in California, ended up buying a 11,000-acre ranch with a lake in the center of the property back in 1998. He describes this ranch as a place where he wants to create a Utopian society where he is the “Chief of a Sovereign Nation.” As a matter of fact, he calls himself “Chief.” He wants to develop a Peace Center for people and local Indian tribes to gain situational and “life awareness” of the earth and its surroundings. I asked him if he had found ultimate inner peace in his own life. I mean for anyone to try and build a Peace Center, you would think that he would be living proof of having that inner sense of peace, right? No. He didn’t even know what true inner peace was! Here he is, a man who has spent over 12 million dollars in court fees to oppose a government that wants to take his land for redistribution and sales, that thrives on the continuous opposition and the “warfare,” as he called it. Yet, he wants to make a Peace Center??!! So, it made me think…here we are in the world, pursuing the American Dream with relentless drive and hard work ethic…but then at the end of the day, we are not necessarily inherently satisfied with that pursuit or even the outcome of it?! I don’t get it. Strive to create peace and yet, have none of our own deep down? I sat in my middle seat on that airplane baffled…
War, relentless opposition, challenge, violence, fear, danger, rage, death… Here we are fighting a war in Afghanistan with our own dying every day so that the average American can pursue this so called “American Dream.” Don’t get me wrong. I am a direct bi-product of a man who ran after the American Dream, but why do people put so much focus on asserting these rights and freedoms when they don’t necessarily comprehend the sacrifices that have been made in order that one may be able to exercise them? I’ve only seen a taste of the war. I’m not a senior enlisted soldier or marine in the infantry that has done 15 tours in the Middle East, but I have seen a lifetime’s worth of trauma, death, and the aftermath of the violence from it in this one deployment alone. One’s perspective on life will change when living day to day, being reminded of life and death…
So, this is what happens after the fact…after being deployed in the desert. You are forced to live outside of the American bubble and it’s ideals at war, and you start to realize just how much life truly is worth and how much we take it for granted. Inner peace to me comes with knowing at the end of the day that if it’s your time to leave this earth and move on, that you have truly lived a full and blessed life, with no true regret and that you are inherently okay with who you are in that one moment in time. I’m okay with who I am now and who I have become. I am the first to admit that I definitely am not perfect, but if it had been my time over in the A-stan, I would have been okay with that…Now, I am pressing on with the rest of my life that I am free to live and am in pursuit of living it to the best of my ability…
