Who Are You When It’s Over?
I’ve been thinking about this question a long time. Not only as a veteran but as a leader who encouraged others to develop themselves beyond their issued job descriptions. If you spend any time scrolling social media, I bet you’ve run across a veteran or two sharing their journey and offering advice. To those of us making the leap back to normal life and those who talk about accepting them. I could justify staying quiet on the topic, but then I’d be nothing more than a hypocrite, removing myself from the discourse when I routinely push everyone around me to engage. While most of us may agree on the high-level, strategic view on what constitutes the problem, how we solve it will be driven by our individual histories and how we reconcile our views on the most important contributing factors. I’ve only begun digging into the problem that is military veteran transition, including with friend and former squadron mate Lucas “Scooter” Rider on the second episode of my podcast The Last Question. Released March 25, 2021, the episode explores how active duty military members may stay in touch with an alternate part of themselves so they can succeed, confident in their non-military identity, after their time in uniform has ended.
The armed services draw recruits from all 50 states, every territory, and multiple countries. The beauty of the United States lies in its diversity, not just in the “racial” or “ethnic” sense, but in the languages, customs, food, vocations, sports, hobbies, and countless more categories each of us explore to form a complex phenomenon known as “identity.”
Each new military member arrives at a processing location claiming a unique, individual identity, then signs up to surrender most of it. Movies and documentaries have made famous buzzed-to-skin haircuts, trading the clothes on your back for clothes identical to everyone else’s, and chants co-opted by hundreds at a time as powerful expressions of common purpose. The military necessarily expects rapid assimilation. Not because we don’t appreciate individuals, but because the battlefield tends to punish us when we concentrate on the “one” over the “many.”
But rapid assimilation, like almost anything else in life, presents a double-edged sword. Before John Pershing led the American Expeditionary Forces into Europe in 1917, the American philosophy of armed defense was largely defensive in nature. Through the language of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, the federal government prohibits itself from restricting a state’s “well-regulated militia.” At the same time, the government allows itself latitude to “provide for” and “[call] forth” those militias in service to the Union. We must not lose the lesson inside the paradox — that a state’s militia, the original reserve force that exists today in part as the National Guard, serves to check federal authority and as that federal authority’s ready-made defensive reserve in times of crisis.
America’s founding generation knew external forces would threaten our sovereignty but remained skeptical of standing armies. During the period, George III’s army quartered troops on ostensibly private property and deployed soldiers as peace officers. After the war, Congress would authorize only a tiny officer corps, a 700-person infantry regiment, and a small navy to protect the coastline and shipping routes. Meanwhile the Constitution acknowledged each state’s right to establish, organize, and train their militias and “appoint” their own officers. When our forces weren’t “raised” by the Congress, each would-be service member served as a productive member of civil society. They maintained their personal weapons and stayed ready to heed the call. There was no assimilation, no expectation to surrender any part of what made you you.
The 20th Century ushered in a new standard of combat and with it, a new set of battlefields. The combination of technological innovation and great power competition yielded a world in which tribalism and a predisposition to hostility took on existential significance. Americans had already assumed responsibility for former Spanish territories when forced to prove itself a (eventually) formidable offensive force under Pershing. As the political lines were redrawn in Europe and Asia, American political leaders argued for professionalizing our military leaders and tacticians who would better anticipate and prepare for future conflicts. The birth of our modern standing army.
It’s impossible for us to know what the American founders would think of our world today, though I doubt any would recognize the structure or culture of our present-day military. The 21st Century so far has presented a compelling predicate for a robust standing army, but we cannot ignore the consequences the idea wrought. Today’s armed services boast financial rewards, comprehensive benefits programs, and fulfilling, life-long careers. Even though “life-long” wasn’t the intent. The American design didn’t presume a lifetime in uniform. That thousands of men and women live in this reality belies the fact that our institution wasn’t designed to enable an assimilated person’s integration back into the society from which they came. So it should come as no surprise — we continue to fail at it.
It’s on us then, isn’t it? Not us collectively but each one of us. To develop and maintain a sense of self wholly separate from the military, the institution, the unit. This doesn’t mean we don’t invest all we can in the mission and our teammates. This doesn’t mean we join and demand the military adapt to our preferences. On the contrary, much of what makes us formidable collapses if it should succumb to the will of the “one.” So what remains is the individual’s power to live something akin to two lives: that of dedicated soldier (using the term in its broadest context) and a productive, well-rounded citizen.
Okay, Arun, that sounds cool. How the *&%! do we do that? If we knew, we’d have done it and wouldn’t have the problems we have.
I’m the last to claim I’ve figured out the how — I am, after all, pending transition and had a very difficult year precisely because I couldn’t extricate myself from my military persona. It cost my mental health and well-being. And much of my confidence. But it’s not just about living two lives. It’s not just about fostering those interests and activities that appeal to the citizen self. It’s about leadership and your investment in other people’s work toward developing that citizen self. Let me get more specific.
If you’re a military supervisor or commander, when was the last time you encouraged one of your unit members to pursue an interest wholly unrelated to the mission or the military in general? Especially if they expressed interest in it first? If the answer is “never” or you can’t remember, that’s a problem. This idea took me a long time to appreciate; I often argued that most of our personal pursuits should still contribute to a better understanding of our combat doctrine, operational history, and evolving personnel practices. You became a better __________ (insert military job) by reading stuff about _________ (insert military job) in history, in current events, even popular culture. Then I experienced the logical conclusion of that approach: burnout.
I spent most of my first operational assignment (five years in North Dakota) reading all I could about the Cold War, nuclear weapons history, the senior leaders who developed “deterrence theory,” and an assortment of post-9/11 commentaries on how we had fought in and around the Central Command theater since 2001. I was neck-deep in military histories and documentaries. It followed me on vacation. When my wife and I drove into South Dakota for a long weekend at Mount Rushmore, I couldn’t help but point out old Minuteman II facilities along the highway. She rolled her eyes and eventually asked me to “give it a rest” so we could enjoy our vacation. I’d been in the Air Force for 15 months. It took me another four years to get to a point where I finally asked myself (after my wife had), “Aren’t you interested in anything else? Or is this all that’ll get you excited?” I figured I was simply a dedicated Airman and patriot by answering HELL NO! But in fact, I was slowly turning into a less-functional citizen, part-in-parcel of being a “patriot.”
My next assignment was defined by work. And more work. 12 hours or more daily, six days per week. On-call 24/7. It was a rewarding, once-in-a-career experience … where I don’t think I read more than 10 books total in three years. I hadn’t discovered podcasts yet, and listened to hard rock when I worked out. Looking back, I was dedicated alright — and sowing the remaining seeds for what would be my eventual identity crisis.
Assigned to a training unit between 2017 and 2018, I started looking for myself. The front cover of the newest Cold War leader’s biography or deterrence history became less appetizing. I’d burned myself out on “professional reading” but not reading, certainly not learning. So I picked up, of all things, a couple books on quantum mechanics. You would expect students of an advanced concept in physics to start with “classical” or Newtonian mechanics — levers and friction and balls-on-ramps — then progress through electricity, magnetism, to atomic and particle physics and the Standard Model, before diving headlong into a world confirmed but far from understood by today’s theoretical physicists. I went straight for the strangest parts of the whole thing. And I was excited again. Excited because I knew nothing about particle physics. I’d shunned natural sciences in college, having failed a prerequisite calculus course and barely skating through physics and chemistry at the same time, so I didn’t think I’d ever grasp one of modern science’s most confounding theories. Then another strange thing happened. I started understanding what these books were describing. I read more, looked for alternate explanations, then critically … started applying what I was learning to other, seemingly disparate fields if inquiry. Like nuclear deterrence and game theory.
I’d managed to loop back around to my profession after all, through a connection that genuinely excited me but sounded nothing like the traditional subject matter. As I worked through the implications of quantum theory for how we think, assess situations, and make decisions, I read more about psychology and behavior and the professionals who’d already stumbled onto this fusion of ideas. This advanced understanding of mechanics, already exploited today in personal electronics, was being used by social scientists to build a more complete quantitative model of how the brain works. The brain, our most complex organ and a decision engine arguably harder to observe than the universe. Fast forward two more years, my continued fascination with neuroscience and decision-making have led me onto a professional path where I’m now applying my experience as a trainer and coach to help families make better financial decisions, leaders develop each other, and would-be veterans expand their intellectual range and land squarely on their own two feet after active service. This is my through-line. It’s taken me a long time to figure out, let alone articulate to anyone else. But this is the journey I think every military member should be ready for as they embark on the journey out of the military, away from their old persona, and back into civilian life.
The professional, active military isn’t going away any time soon. Nor am I arguing for that. Our present reality (and multinational political climate) necessitate the maintenance of an active force ready to respond to crisis, at least until we can return our discourse to a place where collective action is not only technically possible but genuinely plausible. In the meantime, while we have a large, standing military that demands a lot of our brothers and sisters-in-arms, we must protect their individual freedom to explore themselves and ask questions that may sound trivial now but are foundational to their success as a lasting member of the body politic. Because whenever that transition happens, it will be among that person’s most critical life events. Let them know it’s coming and to prepare for it.
