Choosing Our Paths

A reader asked. Why don't you post poetry based on your work and not all that love stuff?

My reports, so concise and specific
Written clearly, not one hieroglyphic
Blood and gore, unusually keen
makes readers queasy and green
So few like my prose scientific.

That's why.

An acquaintance of mine asked me to speak to her oldest son about careers as he is interested in what I was trained to do. He's in his early 20's, out of college, living in that vast cul de sac of trying to decide whether to continue his education and take a job in something he loves which doesn't pay a lot to start or go into a trade that will pay well, but holds no interest for him. I'm not sure why I was chosen for this bit of mentoring. His Mom wasn't real keen on his career aspiration, hoping he'd chose more of an 8 to 5 job to further promote the home, wife, future grandchildren agenda, as soon as possible. She probably figured I'd tell him horror stories of how hard it is to make a career in the field, the regrets I had choosing the path I did.

She could have asked others, I'm not really sure why she asked me. Granted I'm over-educated, but I'm not particularly qualified by life choices to give good advice. It's well known in a small circle that I'm a good friend, a good cook; that I knew several innovative ways to sneak up on bad guys. I can field strip an AR15 and put on tap shoes and "RiverDance" (alcohol is involved). I can't golf or sing, but I can play the piano well and violin badly and order a glass of Ale in several languages. But I've made my share of career and personal mistakes over the years. I've hurt others and been hurt in return by said choices. Should I really be someone who is dispensing possibly life-altering advice?

But I did.

There was no visit to headquarters, no discussion of internships or education. I simply sat him down over coffee. In a little cafe frequented by those he emulates. And all I can tell him is this.

It's nothing like TV.

It's not Gulfstream jets that whisk you everywhere. It's not nightclubs and beaches and $1200 suits. It's greed, it's stupidity. It's death. It's politics. Few think about the consequences of their actions, the concept of mortality being too abstruse to think too deeply on. I tell him that whatever innocence he has now will be shed quietly, the shock of its departure excaberated by the undiluted abundance of the carnage.

Things aren't solved in an hour and when you go home you won't be able to talk about it with your spouse. For reasons that often have little to do with your shyness and more that there are things we just can't talk about.

I tell him it will cause him to examine everything in his life more closely and at one point he may not like what he sees, making changes in his life, how he lives it and with who, based on what he knows is the truth he can live with.

I tell him he will learn to noticed the smallest things, be it evidence or intent, and scrutinize them carefully.

I tell him he will worry about fate less, for sometimes you are simply the bug on the windshield by being at the wrong place at the right time. But I've also found that a good portion of our misfortunes arise, not from fate or ill health or the vagrancies of the winds, but from human rancor, fueled by innate stupidity, and those ever present justifications of the same, hell bent idealism and proselytizing mania for the sake of religious or political effigies.

I tell him he will be required to be dispassionate and get into a routine. Empathy is a great quality in a person, but so is efficacy.

I tell him he will see things that make what's on TV look like a walk in the park. I tell him that he will not only see a lot, he will learn the hard way that there is danger and dangerous souls in the world and if he is smart he will not be one to shy away from it because maybe he can do something about it. It's not a glamorous job, but there is hope in it, there is order.

I've never had the sense of clockwork conspiracies, or some kind of imposing order of evil. There's simply a sense of things falling apart. That's my sense of how most bad things happen, that it's not usually some kind of calculated evil driven by karma, but simply control disintegrating. Most times, things fall apart and happen out of stupidity and carelessness, not any one's personal jihad. And he'll be there to either prevent it, or if he can't, to pick up the pieces.

I tell him it's a life that involves long, disjointed hours, coming home with unpleasant things not just sticking to your shoe, but to your brain, images that come back when you least expect them. For there will be ghosts that flit about your room, loudly breathing lost dreams like air, when all you wish is peace.

I tell him it's a life that can be difficult on a partner. Like loving an airman, it requires a kind of understanding sacrifice in a partner that is either foolish or beautiful or a little of both. If you have that, it's all kinds of wonderful, if not, it's as scalding as a burn.

And finally, as the remains of coffee cool in our mugs, I tell him this. When you come face to face with a decision to pursue a dream, take it. That, despite the ups and downs, bone weary exhaustion, student loans I will be paying until I am dead, blood and tears and long hours, I would do it all over. Without hesitation. But he will not see that looking forward, but only looking back.

For one day, while he is in the field, gazing at everything with that profound look that sees further than what's in front of him, he would understand. In the sightless and streaming dark, among the hushed shouts of men which seem to linger in the thick streaming air until the next shout joins and blends in, he will know, as things lost are gathered together.

In that moment, as the rain starts to fall as if it had held off all day for this moment, he will understand what I can't articulate for him. That he had to have tried, for if he did not, he would have come to this place anyway, but with regret.