Bagram, Afghanistan
About three years ago, I asked my daughter what her most painful memory was. I don’t recall much about the day – whether it was a sunny or rainy, warm or cold – the details escape me and will never be reclaimed, but I remember her answer. We were somewhere alone, likely driving. We were having a serious conversation absent an iPod or a texting cell phone. I thought she would reply recounting the story about her bike accident that happened on August 19, 2005. She was nine years old and riding down Turkey Hill Road on her way to the municipal pool. There is a stretch on our dirt road that gently slopes downward with a field on the right and woods on the left. Trailing her brother, she heard something down and to the left-rear of her bike, like something catching in the chain, and looked back to investigate. Her movement had the unintentional consequence of steering the bike to the left toward the woods. Her front tire fell off the road and into a ditch immediately stopping the bike and breaking her right wrist and her left upper arm as she launched forward, helmet and headfirst into a maturing maple tree. My cool-headed son, who was eleven at the time, provided comfort and aid and sped off on his bike to call me from our home. I arrived on the scene within minutes. The next couple of hours were scary. The helmet, now cracked, had done its job preventing serious injury, but she was broken, literally. Her wrist needed a cast and her upper arm needed a pin inserted surgically. It broke my heart to see her hurt, shaking and looking so frightened. So when I asked her about her most painful memory, like an attorney, I thought I knew the answer. But I was wrong. Her most painful memory, as it turned out, was watching me go to Afghanistan in 2003 – for the first time.
Surprised by her reply, I quizzed her. “Elana,” I asked, “how come your bike accident isn’t your most painful memory.” Her insightful answer was without pause as she explained, “The bike accident hurt, but only for a little while…it was just physical pain. But watching you deploy hurt my heart and lasted much longer.”
What these two experiences do not have in common is the type of pain – physical versus emotional – and where the pain was felt – upper arms versus the lower heart (ache). But what the two experiences do have in common is that neither was chosen. If you ask yourself, “What is the most painful thing that has happened to me?” chances are good that you will arrive at something that you did not choose. In these answers, and reflection, is the inspiration for my second of eleven character principles titled, The Adversity Principle, and states that, “Sometimes you choose adversity, but more often adversity picks you.” More important than the principle is the accompanying question, “How will you respond?”
Appreciating the onset of adversity is not an instinct that comes naturally, but could become the start of an opportunistic response if thought of as the first-step in a character shaping process. The Roman poet Horace suggested that in one of his reflections on life, “Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which, in prosperous circumstances, would have laid dormant.”
Chuck Swindoll, in his famous quote sometimes attributed to Lou Holtz, made it even easier – he simply called adversity ‘life’ saying, “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it.” Sandwiched between Horace and Holtz is Paul writing to the Romans nearly two thousand years ago that we “should rejoice in our sufferings,” which is not a conversational phrase often heard over coffee at a Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts. But it is true – adversity has a way of shaping our character, for better or for worse, based primarily on our first response. The character developing steps that follow – to persevere, the formation of specific character traits and the confidence found in true hope – lay out the entire process.
The 10% of things that happen in life are not age discriminatory. Jackie Robinson, for example, experienced a lifetime’s worth of adversity in 1968 and none was chosen. Approaching fifty years old, 1968 was a year likely more difficult for Robinson than a year two decades earlier in which he broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier. I was a little too young to remember the details of 1968, but it was a year set apart from 1946 – the first full year of peace following WWII and a year that John Updike once suggested was the best year of the 20th century. If 1968 was difficult for our country, it was more so for Jackie Robinson. In that year, his eldest son, Jackie Jr., was arrested – twice. A Vietnam veteran, he led a wandering life upon his return fighting war demons by indulging in drugs and getting to know the police for all the wrong reasons. Also that year, both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. If Robinson’s impact on Civil Rights is best contained in the history of baseball, King’s impact on Civil Rights is best expanded upon in the history of mankind. Robinson and King were dogged in their purpose and shared a special camaraderie. And although he sparred with Senator Kennedy, Robinson was growing warmer to the former Attorney General, whose Civil Rights record was noteworthy. The tragic death of mainstream leaders was hard on Jackie Robinson, like losing teammates while in pursuit of a championship. 1968 was also the year in which Jackie Robinson’s mother passed and his only daughter was married despite her father’s reservations (it would later end in divorce). And if he did not suffer enough heartache in 1968, Robinson also learned that he had real heart issues signaling the start of his final, three year decline. For an exceptional athlete who once persevered through adversity reliant in large part on physical giftedness, it was faith and hope that carried him through 1968 when his physical condition could no longer keep up.
In sixty or so days, I’ll be home from my second deployment to Afghanistan and at some point will find myself again alone and in serious conversation with my daughter. I’ll likely ask her about this period of voluntold* adversity curious to determine its impact. I won’t, though, assume to know her answer as I did a few years ago. She is fourteen now and a veteran of seeing me go away. Somehow, I suspect her positive response to my first deployment shaped character traits in her that made this deployment less painful. But I’ll let you know what she tells me.
RVA
* Vol·un·told
–adjective
Asked without the ability to say no. An Army word frequently used to describe a Soldier’s notification of deployment.
Acknowledgements
Jackie Robinson: A Biography, By Arnold Rampersad
No comments:
Post a Comment