...the walrus said, to talk of many things. Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings."
-Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll
For everyone else, a brief elucidation. Somehow, I spent college doing college stuff, which is to say class, clubs and computer games. But I was never content with that, and I somehow put introspection to the side for nearly four years. That is not to say I ceased being self-critical or analytical, but rather to say that I thought far less than I ought to have about what I was doing or where I was going. I had gone to college as much out of inertia as anything, and I graduated because that was what one did once one started college. I didn't go to college because I really wanted to study anything in particular, beyond satisfying my tremendous curiosity about everything. For years, I craved finding a passion.
"Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire,
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate,
To say that for destruction ice,
Is also great,
And would suffice."
-Fire and Ice, Robert Frost
So, this past year, I've compensated by unleashing four years of constrained existential angst and then compressed it into about four months. The frenzy of the search and the mounting pressure have caused me to continually add more and more future choices, and no small amount of retreading old territory; it was for these continually circular conversations that I must apologize to those with the misfortune of talking to me.
My common analogy has been to describe my efforts as tossing as many plates into the air to see how many survived the fall. I took the GRE, started applications to graduate schools, applied to the Foreign Service, applied to Congressional Offices, and then began speaking with the Army. The rub of it all was that I had no idea when the plates came down. My efforts could be called frenzied, frantic, erratic or simply just desperate--I was compensating for a wayward passion with sheer directionless energy. If you want a sense of how well this works, start running around your front yard the next time you need to do laundry and tell me if you're any better off than when you started.
"For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required:
and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more."
-Luke 12:48
I'm not a religious man, although perhaps a more mature spiritual core would have made this process easier. Nevertheless, I have always held as a core belief that those entrusted with power had an inherent obligation to help other people. Power is not necessarily an evil, although it is all-too often abused. Noblesse oblige is a narrative we have allowed to lapse far too far, as are duty and responsibility. These are not words we find in our vernacular these days, and it does us no amounts of disservice. My own unfamiliarity with the vocabulary of duty evidences how foreign thinking in those terms is for me, yet I'm starting to think it high time I began to embrace the obligations of maturity, and to think about what I owe for the luxuries I've lived.
I've always had some sense of fair play, of honor, and the more time I have spent in school and in books, the more I wanted to fix these problems, and that requires power. I've shared sentiments of outrage at injustice, but I've never placed stock in the power of marches or campaigns to raise awareness. After the last five years, surely there cannot be anyone whose awareness was not raised about Darfur, yet nothing is being done outside the halls of power, and little enough is being done even there. If I want the United States to engage humanitarian crises like Darfur, like Somalia (both today and as in 1993), like Bosnia or Kosovo, then I need to participate. If I want the US to be a force for good in the world, I need to join the government that has prevaricated so lethally on these crises. I must become a part of the problem.
"Be the change you wish to see in the world."
-Ghandi
If I want something to happen in the world, if I want to see the United States be a legitimate City on the Hill, then I need to make it my personal responsibility to affect those dreams. We once were and can yet be a beacon of hope in the world, but why should I expect other people to fight to make that a reality? Perhaps these changes can be made faster or better by others, but it is callow at best to pass the buck to other people and say: "I'm not willing to step up to improve this world, you do it."
Which is why I am signing up with the Army. I have significant objections to the decision to invade Iraq in the first place and I think it ranks as one of history's greatest strategic blunders (although that analysis is probably reinforced by the fact that this crisis occured in my life time; I can't exactly get personally worked up over Napoleon's decision to invade Russia). But it, and all other failed and failing states like it, are threats, and there are no longer problems we can leave on the other side of the world, nevermind that our only choices are between worse and worst. Even so, my reasoning is simpler than an ivory tower discussion on failed states: There are people dying who deserved their chance to live.
"There is more to living than being alive."
-Alexithymia, Anberlin
As I read A Problem from Hell by Samantha Powers, as I researched my thesis, as I watched Hotel Rwanda, I remember literally shaking with rage at the absolute fecklessness of the developed world, as we stood by and did nothing, as we let 7,000 men and boys die in Srebenica, and as we watched hundreds of thousands die in Darfur and Somalia, in the Congo. Internecine warfare grips Iraq and hundreds of thousands more are dead, their blood pooling amidst blossoms of renewed vitality. The US plays no small culpability for unleashing those deaths, and we didn't belong there in the first place. But none of that changes to incredibly acute need now for people who care to step up and contribute, to discharge their duties as citizens of the world; we belong there now.
"It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine."
-William Blake "Auguries of Innocence"
The more time I spend thinking, the more I come to appreciate that while other people are best suited for other forms of service, the military is likely the combination to best realize my unique combination of interests, passions, personal talents, physical abilities, and intellectual gifts. Make no mistake, I'm under no misapprehensions that I will be able to "save" Iraq, or even to save the US from itself. At this point in my life, I want to try to make whatever difference I can and to just touch my small corner of the world. I want to go where my skills and talents can be put to the best use. I want to go to the places that need help the most, so if not Iraq or Afghanistan, Columbia, or Somalia, or Sri Lanka, or Indonesia. I don't doubt I'll be frustrated and disappointed with how impotent I might prove to be, but the only way I can live with myself in the face of such colossal injustices is by knowing that I made the world a better place, that I didn't just let calamities pass me by, and that I made making sure tomorrow is a better day my personal responsibility. As both civis Americanus and civis mundus, I owe no less.
"Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?
Then I said, "Here I am. Send me."
-Isaiah 6:8
