Identity

Identity

More than a decade ago, I discovered TAH while researching the issue of false claims of military service. Since then, one of the questions that comes up with everyone whose claims of service have been called in to question is, why? Why deposit a big ol’ steaming pile of excrement on otherwise honorable if not particularly remarkable service?

According to the wit and wisdom so creatively expressed – and often in unrepeatable terms – of so many here, it is a character statement. I agree it is usually if not always just the cherry on the rancid sundae. But, there is also something more at play.

Since this technically qualifies as my debut piece, it is apropos that I stir the pot. And yes, I am well aware of the requirement to lick the spoon.

Those who make false claims are doing the same as those who make true claims – seeking identity.

Hear me out, then tell me if I’ve got a spoon to lick.

Seeking identity is not only normal and expected, but it is also linked to one of our most primal survival instincts, the need to belong. The fact that humans are social animals cannot be overstated. It is literally written into our DNA. The lone caveman has no descendants.

When people cast about looking for their self-definition and all they find is mundane, unremarkable, forgettable, they yearn to make their lives matter. It’s less a question of how I will be remembered, for some, than will I be remembered at all? Granted, creating a false identity by claiming things you never did is a symptom of other deviant issues. The intent here is to understand some of the why it happens and phrase it as an extreme aberration of a normal, instinctual drive.

Before anyone makes the mistake of thinking I’m soft, be advised. I am neither a bleeding heart nor do I excuse the inexcusable. This is one of those transgressions that causes bile to rise in my throat. Or maybe that is rage. I often get them confused.

The purpose in understanding motivations is not to mitigate earned consequences. Breeches in the social contract need to come with significant negative outcomes in a just and humane society. We can pity, have sympathy and even true empathetic recognition of the driver of the behavior without excusing the behavior. Or softening consequences.

Let me pose this in a different way…with a story that fits many, a few I personally know, and one in particular. As always, names and some details are changed, but the story remains true.

Why does someone who served four years forty years ago suddenly start replaying the memory tape of those days?

Cpl. Sam Snuffy did his four, with a true feeling of patriotism but with a primary goal of attaining education benefits. Sam goes to school and gets his degree and embarks on a career in marketing and sales for Acme Widgets. He does well, marries, earns a decent living, sees a couple kids through college and along the way even earns Widget Wonderman of the Quarter a few times, complete with all-expense paid trips with the missus to the awards banquet and convention in Des Moines.

Now, grandkids are expected and he is disappointed to learn the gold watch ceremony is a relic of a bygone era. He has lived the American dream but is floundering to find meaning and fulfillment. He has no complaints beyond the usual suspect prostrate and creeping A1C and utter banality of daytime TV. He golfs, badly, on occasion and starts planning his days around doctors and the wife’s hair appointments. He finds it more convenient to shop on senior discount day to avoid the crowds at Kroger’s.

As life winds down what he remembers most fondly is when life had immediacy and purpose and a brotherhood he never expected, and has experienced no-where or no-when else. College frat buddies have drifted away, and he doesn’t relish another reunion with guys who became way more successful, and love to remind him of that fact.

He recognizes more and more as society appears to disintegrate year by year that he once did something most never could or would. He served. He’s mildly surprised, when he thinks about it, how much pride he feels in that long-ago service. He watches the news and hears less and less about those currently serving, about where they are, what they’re doing, what they’re risking. And he gets angry. Those kids, all of them younger than his own, are being forgotten. Who will ever remember his unremarkable and long-ago service? Shockingly, he realizes he had all but forgotten himself, his own brotherhood, for decades.

Sam goes online and buys a hat, emblazoned with the unit with which he once served. He wants everyone to know he served, but not really to make it about himself. He wants people to remember the role he once occupied to bring recognition to those currently serving. He finds his local American Legion and stops in for a beer. The bartender is covered in tattoos, sporting the military haircut Cpl. Sam Snuffy remembers so well. The kid says, “First drink is on the house. Thank you for your service, brother, and welcome home”.

Whether Sam starts embellishing his service or not will depend not just on his character, but also on how satisfied he is with his life. Sam, like every one of us has or will, reached a point where he will slide into what Erickson called the final stage of human development, Integrity vs. Despair.

Is Sam satisfied with his life, or is he looking back through a darkling lens of disappointment? Is he looking forward to his so called Golden Years as something do be endured until death? Or is he able to recall, albeit fuzzily and admittedly romanticized a life fully lived, and with purpose? Sam says yes to parts of all the above, as do most of us.

How these issues we all face manifest uniquely in the veteran community is one of those areas that are significantly misunderstood, if they are recognized as unique at all. Civilians did not experience the regimented, stratified, hierarchical world of the military during their coming of age, when their initial adult identity was formed, even crystalized. Civilians’ final brain development did not coincide with immersion into an idealized world of honor, integrity and even glory being defined as inclusion in a brotherhood, a community of purpose.

For millennia, human societies recognized the warrior as occupying a unique place in society. Once a young man became a warrior, that identity was part and parcel of him, for life, regardless of what else he did. He was a warrior who married, a warrior who had children, a warrior who now practiced another skill or fulfilled another, additional role. In our society, we don’t value a warrior while they are actively being a warrior as providing an integral service. An old warrior is even less valued. Unless that warrior claims to be part of our mythology, of our revered legends.

All of this is a long way of saying that those who claim to have done what they never did, diminishing whatever they did do in the process, are a symptom. Yes, punish them. Ridicule them. If appropriate, prosecute and fine them, even if that negatively impacts their families. Make them pay the price of carrying an ignoble identity for their contemptable theft of one they did not earn. But don’t forget to recognize it is not only about unearned glory, it is also about identity, the primal instinct to belong. Most of all, it is about how little we value warriors for the role they played, whatever that entailed.

At the end of Sam’s story, does he choose to humbly listen and find satisfaction in merely having been a part of something honorable? Does he engage in relatively harmless if annoying barstool bragging? Or does he buy the leathers, patches, Harley and dog, and emblazon the vest and cap with flea market purchases of medals he never earned? I can’t help but wonder if we actually valued our warriors if Sam’s choice would even be a question.

The Sam upon which this story is based made the first choice. He remains one of the kindest souls I’ve ever known, who regularly sheds a tear at the playing of the National Anthem. These are tears of pride, yes, but mostly of regret over spending too many years not being moved, not remembering.

 

Tags: Mental Health, Veterans Issues, Warrior, Warrior Mindset

Category: The Warrior Mind