no one is coming to help us.

At the very moment, Mar 23- There is a bill being pushed to take away 30% of veterans benefits during the most transitionally traumatic times of someones life, retirement age. Why does this matter? We must prepare now to set conditions for success in the future, not only in congress and senate, but also inside our own lives.

A large portion of Veterans of Iraq year one stand at a mountain top of sorts at this point in our lives, will we seize the moment to be the better leader we have been training to be? You know the one, the leader you remember looking up to during your younger years. Even if you didn't realize it at that moment why, you knew you respected them. I had a leader like that right into my first unit in the Army, we will call him SFC Dirby for privacy's sake. 

SFC Dirby was the old school PSG, not in the smacking me in the face kind of way, but I didn't want to get seen by him, let alone talk to him kind of way. Well I was a young private right to Korea and needed leadership, just not his, or so I thought. I was fairly good at running and to my dismay he would lead my ability group during runs. It didnt surprise me given his physical presence. 

He struck me as a very serious and a very in shape kind of guy. Both were true, and may be still I dont know. Well one early morning about 10 of us form up for the ability group run and he didn't approach the group. We quickly took notice of this, then did a right face forward march to blend into the calamity of people everywhere, there was about 300 people getting into groups. Then we hit double time real quick. We had escaped him. 

I learned something that morning. A good leader will find you and fix you. As we hit the top of the barracks hill on Camp Stanley, Korea circa 2002, we looked down on the lower lying areas while we cautiously caught our breathe after running up the steep inclines. My heart rate slowed and "this is peaceful", I thought, I then remembered they called Korea, Land of the Morning Calm, I agreed. That is until I looked down towards the airfield, which was about 1/2 to 3/4 mile away, and I see SFC Dirby running in a direction which seemed like he could intercept us. Even upon noticing it was him I had anxiety start to work its way up, luckily we were on the move. Could he have noticed it was us if I was able to notice it was him, I thought. No way, he was probably busy yelling at people and didnt miss us. He probably didnt even want to run with us if he didn't show up, I thought. False.

SFC Dirby did want to run with us. Im also fairly certain he also corrected people (yelling or talking overly aggressive back in the day) on the way to catch us in a classic move I like to call "fall in"d. No it wasnt the classic fall-in associated with drill and ceremonies, it was the come run right next to where I am because I am hijacking this run, kind of fall in. So we did and he ran the piss out of us. Remember that point that we ran away from him in the beginning? Yeah well that smoked us, then he smoked us. 

As I went on to serve in his platoon for the year it dawned upon me. If he is so rigid that we are correct about as many things we can be, given our restraints, no one will mess with us. Basically, outperform everyone and no one will mess with you. Sounds like power doesnt it. It is in the classic sense, not really anything you can put your finger on, but its there. So I learned to believe in that. My career proved that to me also.

Wielding power is much different from gaining power.

How will we want to wield our power when we all age. We must do what is in our power to use our combined experiences to help each other as well as ourselves. Our country may or may not help you when you get old and need it. It may seem like its a small thing thats way off in the future, but that is how you fight in a "social" manner. You need to work on your goals and focus with the determination of multi-generational values. The falsities of life will decay away, only your truth will remain. If your truth is not grounded in the roots of a value system your time spent here on earth will fade away. We serve to be your garden.

In the real sense, you served, now we will serve as a place to plant your seeds. You will be able to rely on the independence of this project from future as we move through phases of implementation. This entity will embark upon a journey never before attempted. 

We reap what we sow