Adam’s Peace

I was originally going to write today’s post on the topic of journaling, but Jennifer Lynn at Broke-Ass Student tagged me to answer they question, “why do you blog.”

If I understand the purpose of being tagged with a question clearly enough, it means that I should now answer the question, then tag someone else with the same question. I think that sounds fair, since Jennifer gave a nice answer on her own blog, after being tagged by another fellow blogger, who was also tagged with the same question. Unlike email hoaxes, this is a good way to keep the topic moving along, without spreading false information. If anyone else claims that Paul Harvey claimed that Hilary Clinton broke terrorists out of jail, so now I know “the rest of the story,” I’m going to scream. (Please, people. If you are ever forwarded a story, check Snopes.com first. It saves me a nasty email in reply, and it saves you the embarrassment of getting that nasty reply email.)

I suppose that I have just uncovered one of my reasons for blogging. It is so that I can ramble on for a bit about a random topic, such as forwarded email hoaxes. I enjoy putting my thoughts into words, and reading those words later. I enjoy my own wit, and I sometimes re-read my posts in order to enjoy those jokes again. Yes, I am a dork who laughs at himself, which is yet another thing that I find amusing about blogging.

The reason why I blog about inner peace, though, is a very long story. I have already written about it in my post titled Why, but like any story about a real person, small details change as certain aspects of the past gain or lose importance. This seems like a good time to dust off the history behind my purpose.

In my early childhood, I lived with my father and two sisters, every once in a while moving into and out of my grandparents’ house, or sharing a house with one of my father’s girlfriends. I can’t remember a time when I lived with my mother, because my parents divorced when I was very young.

Around the time that my parents divorced, my mother had a boyfriend who would physically and sexually abuse my two older sisters, and physically abused me. I only have a vague memory of a memory about that time, though I know that the experiences affected my childhood dramatically. I have long since forgiven that man, for various reasons. He spent his time in jail, and even now his record haunts him, prohibiting him from getting any jobs that require any level of confidence. I don’t know if he is repentant for what he has done, but he is out of my life, and he can not affect me any more than I let him.

Regardless of how I feel about him now, while I was growing up, I let my self esteem drop several levels. In Kindergarten, I was tested with a genius level IQ. Since second grade, I have done appallingly poor at school, not for lack of understanding, but for lack of caring. I was placed in special education, and I learned first hand just how unsuited the entire special education system is to assisting students who are too smart for their own good. I wanted to learn faster than anybody else, not repeat the same lessons many times. Instead, since I refused to repeat the lessons, I was put into a situation where I had to repeat each lesson twice as often as “smart” kids. Because of my low self esteem, I simply sat silently, letting the frustration build more and more, adding to a self destructive cycle. After graduating from high school, my average IQ score had dropped twenty points from that first test in Kindergarten.

During my school years, I received many labels from psychiatrists and well intentioned teachers. Fortunately, I was never labeled as having an attention disorder, since I clearly learned quickly enough. Being labeled, though, didn’t help me at all. In fact, the vast majority of labels were extremely inaccurate, ranging from having autism, being an idiot savant, or just plain being stupid. On principal even labeled me as a trouble maker in my official records, because other students would pick on me. I still have a real problem with being labeled, which I have recently identified and am working on. The labels that I take on myself aren’t nearly as bad as the ones placed on me, of course, but I still need to work on seeing them constructively.

Also in second grade, my father remarried. My life was a true fairy tale, complete with the wicked step mother. Now, I realize that my perceptions were skewed, simply because it was a major change in my life, and I was a child. Regardless of why I felt that way, I absolutely despised my step mother. It certainly didn’t help that she acted with frustration and anger every time she became stressed. She remains the only person who I have been furious with, where I have lost my temper to the point where I did not understand my actions. I learned that ignorance is not bliss from my step mother, as well as how to clean. The labels that she gave me were the worst of all, ranging around stupid and lazy, and various other forms of those words.

When I was thirteen, I began volunteering at a hospital over three summers. The first year, I worked as an administrative assistant at the main laboratory, mostly stuffing billing envelopes. The second year, I worked in the long term care section, with people who had terminal illnesses or injuries so severe that it took several months or even years to recover. The final year, I worked with the computer nerds, troubleshooting paper jams and running operating system installations. I learned that even the most glamorous sounding jobs always have extra duties. I also learned that giving without the expectation to receive brings far more useful rewards, such as happiness and health.

At my first paying job, as a bag boy at a grocery store, I learned that faking a smile often brings a real smile. I also learned, just from observing the several different managers, that people who feel included in the decision making process will always contribute more than those who feel left out.

After high school (which I graduated half a year late, due to continuing poor study habits), I joined the Army. I joined to get away from my step mother, and to make my father proud. It was hard to leave the house for the first time, but somehow I survived. I learned many, many hard lessons in the Army, and many of those lessons are still being learned. The slowest, most painful lesson that I learned was, no matter how far along in the chain of command someone is, they are still human. This doesn’t just apply to the military, but to any organization. In fact, it is the root to one of the fears that I am still working to overcome. I have a fear of bureaucratic organizations… It isn’t rational, but it does prevent me from making some phone calls.

Well, my first duty station while in the Army was Camp Humphrey’s, in South Korea. I fell in love with the people there, just as I love Americans. I also became an alcoholic, which was a problem which followed me for a few years afterwards. I had my problems, mostly stemming from a fear of authority. One day towards the end of my year there, my company visited the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the two kilometer stretch of wilderness that separates North and South Korea. It remains the area that has the highest buildup of troops on either side. At the end of the Korean War, the troops on both sides were in a very bloody stalemate… The North’s supply lines were stretched to their maximum, and the South could not fight any further without those supply lines being strengthened by the decrease in distance. For about a year, the fighting was concentrated over that region, simply because if any side advanced, the other side would gain a slight advantage. Finally, a cease-fire was signed at a small camp in the middle of that line, and each side withdrew one kilometer each. The resulting void became the DMZ, which was filled with land mines to replace the people. Other than that cease-fire, no other treaties have been signed, making the Korean War the longest modern war, running over fifty years and still going. While I was visiting the DMZ, I got to enter the building where the peace talks are still held. It is a small building, with a large table in the middle, and a red line painted through the center, marking the center.

That line still bothers me. It is only a line, that anybody can walk over. I myself walked about four feet past that line, as did many of the other soldiers in my unit. (Walking out the door on the north side of the building, though, would have gotten my captured as a prisoner of war.) Yet still, that red line is what holds back then armies of the North and the armies of the South from resuming their fighting, this time with the possibility of nuclear weapons. That red line holds back thousands of artillery pieces from firing a constant rain of steel, and stops medium range missiles from destroying cities. One four inch wide line is all that stops thousands of people from dieing. I felt then, that if I could just erase that line without releasing the armies behind it, the world would be better.

That was when the first form of my purpose started to come out. I knew that fear is just as effective a weapon against war as any out there. If you can not guarantee that you will win a war, it isn’t likely that you’ll start fighting. If you can see the number of troops on the other side, and they’re impressive enough, then the fear of losing will stay your hand. I started to see my best contribution against war as being a statistic, of increasing the number of troops by one, and making certain that anyone who would call me an enemy knew that I was willing to give my life to protect the freedom that I enjoy, and that I was well trained enough to make my life’s price a high one.

I saw the year 1999 leave, and the year 2000 come while I was in Korea. After one year of being in Korea, I was stationed to Fort Lewis, in Washington State. Life went on, and I was trained on newer and better technology. I became more of an alcoholic, and withdrew further into my own fears, with the idea of being a statistic against war being my guidance. After the first year of being stationed at Fort Lewis, I went on leave, and decided to visit my girlfriend, who was living in upstate New York. I had already visited her on leave before, in the middle of my tour in Korea, but this time, I was to spend an entire month with her.

That wasn’t what fate had in store for me, though.

At first, everything seemed fine, and she was happy to see me. As the first week went on, I noticed that things were a bit more strained than usual. By the end of the second week, I knew that something was seriously wrong… Finally, she told me that she wanted to end the relationship, because the distance was too great, and the time between visits was too long. I nodded, swallowed hard, and accepted it. I gave my parents a call later that night, and they bought plane tickets for me to come home. I spent that night, and the next night at my ex-girlfriend’s house, then caught a flight to Phoenix. While I was in the air, my grandfather, who had been in poor health since a surgery three years prior, had entered the hospital again for life threatening pneumonia. I spent that night at my sister’s house, and as I went to bed on that Monday night, September 10th, 2001, I worried about myself and about my grandfather.

We all know what happened the next day.

I was a soldier in the U.S. Army, touted as the greatest army in the world. I was home on leave, away from my duty, away from the people who had sworn to protect the citizens of this country. As I watched those twin towers fall, I knew that I had failed. Maybe I hadn’t failed directly, since I didn’t know of the attack until it was too late to stop it, but I had placed my purpose, my being, around being a statistic to stop attacks like this.

The hours turned into days. The days turned into weeks. The weeks turned into months, and life went on, no matter how painful it was. Heroes emerged, and heroes failed to emerge. The greedy sought power, and the peaceful sought peace. Everybody’s character was put to the test, and we all emerged a little bit older and a little bit wiser. The quiet appreciation of liberty was drowned out by a deafening cry for security.

I watched the first attacks against the Taliban both through the eyes of CNN and from the sensors of national assets. I felt a sense of vengeance that I am not proud of now. The months turned into another year, then two more months saw me training other soldiers in the sandy forests of Fort Polk, Louisiana. I made a phone call to one of my sisters to wish her a happy Thanksgiving, and I found out that she had a roommate. Since I had some leave saved up, I decided to visit this sister, since I hadn’t seen her since joining the Army.

The next month, I took two weeks of leave, visiting the sister who I had not seen for a while for one week, and visiting the rest of my family for the second week. I met Trina, the roommate, and fell in love. I took a week of leave a month later, and decided that I wanted to marry her. I took the final week of leave that I had saved up a month later, and proposed to her. On April 20th, 2003, five days before my 23rd birthday, we were married. Getting engaged so quickly was foolish, as was having such a short engagement, but it was the best decision that I made in my life.

Two months later, I got an apartment, and was able to move my new wife in. That first year, Trina broke me of my alcohol addiction, and managed to break me of a growing addiction to online games. When my first four years in the military was over, I re-enlisted. At the end of the fifth year, I received a medical discharge with full honors and no requirement to serve extra time in an inactive status.

When I was released from the military, I moved in with the sister who had brought Trina and me together, and began going to school to get a degree in computer science. After a few setbacks financially, my sister had to give up her house, and we moved into separate apartments in a near-by city. Eventually, I found Steve Pavlina’s site, which set me on the path to personal development. Besides starting to practice time management techniques, my first step was to identify my life purpose, which was a process that took me a few months. Eventually, while watching a five year anniversary special about the attacks of September 11ths, 2001, I identified my purpose, which is to bring peace to everybody.

This blog is my first real step to realizing my purpose. It started out as a place for people to ask random questions and get scientific answers, such as why the sky is blue, or why printers seem to always jam when you’re in a hurry. Borrowing off of my wife’s debate skills, I named the first blog AskTrina. After identifying my purpose, though, I changed the format to one of personal development and peace, and changed the domain name when I had the money to rent a server to host the site on.

This blog is just one step in my goal to bring peace to everybody. Another goal which I have is to become a public speaker and a published author, though those steps are on stand-by until I can make enough residual income on this blog that I don’t need a ‘job.’ I don’t want to have to speak for money, nor do I want to be a starving author until I can get a book published, so this blog is a necessary first step, and it will continue to be a vital part of my purpose, because of the ease and speed of communication.

I blog because I love the medium, method, and results. If I can help one person to acheive peace, no matter how little money I gain from it, then I am happy. Part of my purpose comes from guilt, from failing in my last purpose. I suppose that failure was inevitable, but that does not lessen the pain that the failure caused, nor does it weaken the lessons learned from it. Part of my purpose comes from fear, that if more people do not find inner peace, then perhaps the idea of peace will be impossible to fathom by future generations. Mostly, though, my purpose comes from love, love for each of my readers… Love for each stranger that I pass on the street… Love even for those who have hurt me in the past, or seek to hurt me now. I want everybody to be safe and free, which is possible when they acheive inner peace.

I’d like to tag Jeff Lilly at DruidJournal.net with the same question asked of me. Jeff, why do you blog?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 28th, 2007 at 11:26 am and is filed under Life Purpose, Inner Peace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.