Quitting Is Unthinkable And Pain Is Just

In The Military I Could Exercise The Power Of Being Automatically Respected Because Of The Medals On My Chest, Not Because I Had Done Anything Right At The Moment To Earn That Respect. This Is Pretty Nice. It's Also A Psychological Trap That Can Stop One's Growth And Allow One To Get Away With Just Plain Bad Behavior.

I Knew Many Marines Had Done Brave Deeds That No One Saw And For Which They Got No Medals At All. I Was Having A Very Hard Time Carrying Those Medals And Didnt Have The Insight Or Maturity To Know What To Do With My Combination Of Guilt And Pride.

We Mistakenly Assume That Bodily Survival Has A Higher Precedence Than Ego Survival. This Is Simply Not Generally True. Ego Will Happily Destroy The Body For Its Own Sake. Look At Overweight Executives Headed For Heart Attacks On The Way To Getting Their Pictures In Fortune Or Anorexic Models Suffering Slow Starvation On Their Way To Getting Their Pictures In Vogue. Protecting Ego Is The General Case.

Cynicism Is No More Mature Than Naïveté. You're No More Mature, Just More Burned.

Matterhorn Is My Metaphor Of The Vietnam War - We Built It, We Abandoned It, We Assaulted It, We Lost, And Then We Abandoned It Again.