Posted on Apr 20, 2016
Your Time In Service Shouldn’t Be Your Glory Years
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You made a difference in uniform. Just don’t let that be the only difference you make.
So, you’ve finally left the military. You’ve completed your service honorably, be that four years or 20. You’ve sacrificed plenty, and watched others do the same or more. You’ve been there, done that, and gotten more t-shirts than can fit in your closet.
That doesn’t mean you have to wear those t-shirts every day.
The memories those t-shirts recall aren’t the best days of your life. Or at least they don’t have to be.
Too many vets are trapped in a military version of the old Bruce Springsteen song “Glory Days.” Like the song’s pitcher and pretty girl, too many veterans are stuck reminiscing over beers, talking about the old times, and exchanging boring stories.
The point isn’t that those memories aren’t important, aren’t precious, but that life going forward is far more important than life looking back.
Related: Why service members are true professionals »
Too many veterans, in person and in social media, state that the best years of their lives were the ones they spent in the service. While a touching sentiment, veterans who say this are selling themselves short.
Too many vets embrace what might be called the “Professional Veteran” identity. Having beers with old buddies doesn’t make one a professional veteran. Going to the VFW or a Veterans Day parade doesn’t make one a professional veteran. Living the rest of one’s life looking back at the portion spent in the service does.
Those days spent in the service aren’t, or at shouldn’t be, the high point of your life. The rest of your life is. Current life expectancy in the United States is 78.8 years. Spending 50 of them looking backward is wasting those years. Even if those years in the service do end up being the best years of your life, lingering on them excessively is just taking the luster off one’s golden years.
I recently spent a very long couple of hours near an older man on an airplane. Not World War II, Korean War, or Vietnam War old, just an older man, yet he wore a Marine Corps satin jacket, USMC baseball cap, and a cane carved with Marine Corps symbols from handle to tip. All due to four years in the Corps in the early 1980s.
Luckily for me, there was a young devil dog straight out of boot camp next to him to absorb his stories about the old days. This man had 30 years of life since the Marine Corps to talk about. He could’ve bent that young Marine’s ear about how the Marine Corps taught him to make the most of the rest of his life, likely with a second career, a wife, kids, and probably grandkids. Yet he couldn’t get past tales of the “Old Corps.”
Don’t be an Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite, living in a van and bragging about the glory days of yesteryear. Even if the military was the formative experience of your life, it was only forming you and preparing you for bigger things.
What those things are doesn’t really matter. For some, it may mean climbing the corporate ladder. For others, it may mean building a family. For others, it may mean public service or growing in faith or charitable works. Whatever it is, the military prepared you for it, be it by giving you the leadership skills you needed or by giving you the self-discipline that raising children and so many other things in life require.
The military wasn’t the culminating point of your life. If it was, then you need to take a long, hard look at what you’re doing. If those four years, or 20 years, were the best of your life, then fix the rest of your life. You have far more to give to the world than your time in uniform.
Raise your kids. Do your new job well. Go help the homeless. Do whatever. Save your reminiscing about your time in uniform for when you see your old crew.
Ronald Reagan famously said, “Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don’t have that problem.” That’s definitely true, not just for Marines, but for all veterans who served honorably.
You made a difference in uniform. Just don’t let that be the only difference you make.
TSgt Joe C. SFC William Farrell PO1 William "Chip" Nagel LTC Stephen F.] SGT Robert George SMSgt Minister Gerald A. "Doc" Thomas Maj Marty Hogan LTC (Join to see) MSG Andrew White SGT (Join to see) SFC Dave Beran SP5 Robert Ruck SGT Philip Roncari SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth SFC Shirley Whitfield MSgt George Cater SP5 Michael Rathbun CW5 (Join to see) SGT Michael Thorin SPC Margaret Higgins
So, you’ve finally left the military. You’ve completed your service honorably, be that four years or 20. You’ve sacrificed plenty, and watched others do the same or more. You’ve been there, done that, and gotten more t-shirts than can fit in your closet.
That doesn’t mean you have to wear those t-shirts every day.
The memories those t-shirts recall aren’t the best days of your life. Or at least they don’t have to be.
Too many vets are trapped in a military version of the old Bruce Springsteen song “Glory Days.” Like the song’s pitcher and pretty girl, too many veterans are stuck reminiscing over beers, talking about the old times, and exchanging boring stories.
The point isn’t that those memories aren’t important, aren’t precious, but that life going forward is far more important than life looking back.
Related: Why service members are true professionals »
Too many veterans, in person and in social media, state that the best years of their lives were the ones they spent in the service. While a touching sentiment, veterans who say this are selling themselves short.
Too many vets embrace what might be called the “Professional Veteran” identity. Having beers with old buddies doesn’t make one a professional veteran. Going to the VFW or a Veterans Day parade doesn’t make one a professional veteran. Living the rest of one’s life looking back at the portion spent in the service does.
Those days spent in the service aren’t, or at shouldn’t be, the high point of your life. The rest of your life is. Current life expectancy in the United States is 78.8 years. Spending 50 of them looking backward is wasting those years. Even if those years in the service do end up being the best years of your life, lingering on them excessively is just taking the luster off one’s golden years.
I recently spent a very long couple of hours near an older man on an airplane. Not World War II, Korean War, or Vietnam War old, just an older man, yet he wore a Marine Corps satin jacket, USMC baseball cap, and a cane carved with Marine Corps symbols from handle to tip. All due to four years in the Corps in the early 1980s.
Luckily for me, there was a young devil dog straight out of boot camp next to him to absorb his stories about the old days. This man had 30 years of life since the Marine Corps to talk about. He could’ve bent that young Marine’s ear about how the Marine Corps taught him to make the most of the rest of his life, likely with a second career, a wife, kids, and probably grandkids. Yet he couldn’t get past tales of the “Old Corps.”
Don’t be an Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite, living in a van and bragging about the glory days of yesteryear. Even if the military was the formative experience of your life, it was only forming you and preparing you for bigger things.
What those things are doesn’t really matter. For some, it may mean climbing the corporate ladder. For others, it may mean building a family. For others, it may mean public service or growing in faith or charitable works. Whatever it is, the military prepared you for it, be it by giving you the leadership skills you needed or by giving you the self-discipline that raising children and so many other things in life require.
The military wasn’t the culminating point of your life. If it was, then you need to take a long, hard look at what you’re doing. If those four years, or 20 years, were the best of your life, then fix the rest of your life. You have far more to give to the world than your time in uniform.
Raise your kids. Do your new job well. Go help the homeless. Do whatever. Save your reminiscing about your time in uniform for when you see your old crew.
Ronald Reagan famously said, “Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don’t have that problem.” That’s definitely true, not just for Marines, but for all veterans who served honorably.
You made a difference in uniform. Just don’t let that be the only difference you make.
TSgt Joe C. SFC William Farrell PO1 William "Chip" Nagel LTC Stephen F.] SGT Robert George SMSgt Minister Gerald A. "Doc" Thomas Maj Marty Hogan LTC (Join to see) MSG Andrew White SGT (Join to see) SFC Dave Beran SP5 Robert Ruck SGT Philip Roncari SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth SFC Shirley Whitfield MSgt George Cater SP5 Michael Rathbun CW5 (Join to see) SGT Michael Thorin SPC Margaret Higgins
Your Time In Service Shouldn’t Be Your Glory Years
Posted from taskandpurpose.comPosted in these groups: 
Service
Service
Edited >1 y ago
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 13
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Our glory years will be in Heaven with our Lord and Savior my friend SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL. My 34 years in uniform will pale in comparison with what lies ahead for those of us who places our faith in the finished work of our Lord and Savor when he atoned for our sins past, present and future on the cross.
SMSgt Minister Gerald A. Thomas SSgt (Join to see) SGM David W. Carr LOM, DMSM MP SGT SGT Forrest Stewart SGT Robert Hawks SrA Christopher Wright
SMSgt Minister Gerald A. Thomas SSgt (Join to see) SGM David W. Carr LOM, DMSM MP SGT SGT Forrest Stewart SGT Robert Hawks SrA Christopher Wright
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SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL
LTC Stephen F. I do miss mine, but agree more with your response. How true and necessary for my salvation. Thanks for the response, needed and respected my way!
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SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL Oh it is not, or the games we played as kids and ARE blessed, if we can. LTC Stephen F.
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SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL
SSgt (Join to see) thanks, I can tell you from my perspective, the military helped but mold me and the civilian world slapped me with reality! Cold hearted out here!
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Transition from active service can be a huge kick in the ass. The length and/or intensity of service can determine how much of your sense of identity is wrapped up in your service history. Good or bad, the service was family and home to many many people. Changing that familiar environment with a hand shake and DD-214 can be a trial for the best of us. When you now walk the streets as an average Joe with no one to "really" communicate then you are in a bad place. The natural tendency is to attempt to reclaim what is comforting, familiar, and in many ways something that made you proud and sure of who you are.... Or were?
The article has great words of wisdom to move ahead with your life. You don't have to discard the part of you that was molded by your service family - call it a win. Hang on to it. However, nothing prevents you from claiming more territory in your life by adding more goals and experiences that are additive to your soul or sense of self. Be the vet, wear the scars proudly, but don't close the book on life now that you've accomplished your service. Go make use of the life that so many of our brothers and sisters can no longer live because they didn't make it back home. If nothing motivates you to go live past the war, then let your obligation to them be your incentive. If you don't know what you want to do, that's ok. You can simply decide for yourself what would "they" do if they had a chance to live and come home? Start there just to start something... anything. You can now even change your mind mid-way through a goal, too, because DoD policy authorizes it when temporarily borrowing someone else's goals. (Just some levity there.) However., I doubt that our lost friends would spend every weekend at the VFW telling war stories, but maybe just a little.
Writing this, I was reminded of a profound experience I encountered while on burial details before 9/11. I was burying old guys who died naturally as one can when your 80, and their service was all but gone to history. Especially to their families. More often than not, family approached me after we rendered honors to their granddad to thank us. They would regularly comment that they forgot that grand dad served, and felt even more proud to see his extended military family ceremonial declare this man's service and past. The dead man had successfully moved on from his service, built a family and a life in addition to his military experience; so much that it was almost imperceptible to his family....until that moment. I held the thought, "there lies a rich man." He lived a long life that was apparently a happy one. He had the t-shirts, but probably never needed to wear them much to be fulfilled in life. The crack of the saluting rifles was jolting to the civilians. It would break their indifferent veneer wide enough so that when taps was played there was always a tear.
The article has great words of wisdom to move ahead with your life. You don't have to discard the part of you that was molded by your service family - call it a win. Hang on to it. However, nothing prevents you from claiming more territory in your life by adding more goals and experiences that are additive to your soul or sense of self. Be the vet, wear the scars proudly, but don't close the book on life now that you've accomplished your service. Go make use of the life that so many of our brothers and sisters can no longer live because they didn't make it back home. If nothing motivates you to go live past the war, then let your obligation to them be your incentive. If you don't know what you want to do, that's ok. You can simply decide for yourself what would "they" do if they had a chance to live and come home? Start there just to start something... anything. You can now even change your mind mid-way through a goal, too, because DoD policy authorizes it when temporarily borrowing someone else's goals. (Just some levity there.) However., I doubt that our lost friends would spend every weekend at the VFW telling war stories, but maybe just a little.
Writing this, I was reminded of a profound experience I encountered while on burial details before 9/11. I was burying old guys who died naturally as one can when your 80, and their service was all but gone to history. Especially to their families. More often than not, family approached me after we rendered honors to their granddad to thank us. They would regularly comment that they forgot that grand dad served, and felt even more proud to see his extended military family ceremonial declare this man's service and past. The dead man had successfully moved on from his service, built a family and a life in addition to his military experience; so much that it was almost imperceptible to his family....until that moment. I held the thought, "there lies a rich man." He lived a long life that was apparently a happy one. He had the t-shirts, but probably never needed to wear them much to be fulfilled in life. The crack of the saluting rifles was jolting to the civilians. It would break their indifferent veneer wide enough so that when taps was played there was always a tear.
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