LTC Kloster decided to have a meeting with a lot of us today, because I suppose she wanted to get the rumors straight. Ironically, the rumor of her reason setting up this meeting was to set things straight before we’re to have another meeting with COL Kennedy some weeks later. I don’t know if it’s true, but we’ll find out soon enough. So after everything else, I asked her about how we got to be here. Did someone push it? I don’t know. Are we here not because of our mission (some of us came without one) but because someone’s ambition? She said it’s just not true. Well, I stuck my ground, for about good 5 minutes, after her prolonged explanation. About how the JMMT in Iraq changed a lot of things, how we now need more postal units now than originally imagined, so that changed all that, a lot of that.
Now I wish that I could have said a few things. If a General is adept enough to read the columns of letters in a newspaper and reply to a number of concerns regarding escalated gas prices, why didn’t anyone, dozens more of E8, E9, O4, O5, O6s, or even another general, replied one and for all that the rumors are all not true, that we all came with a mission? Has settling gas prices and legitimizing its increase become more important than improving and maintaining soldiers’ morales? What happened to soldier first, mission always? What if when there is no mission, is there a solider? Now this means one of few things. Either the army just screwed up big time, she’s lying to me, or I’m just too arrogant to believe anything but that of mine.
I know I’m lucky to be here. Not completely, but no matter. I’m lucky in many ways, unlucky in many others. The only difference between being lucky is that if I was unlucky to begin with, that is, not having experienced what I have, I would have gotten over the unlucky part a lot easier and carried on with my life much quicker, and in that case, would in the short 4-6 year run, I believe, I would have been much more luckier. I suppose that’s what bothers me, trying to persuade myself that this is worth it, the experience, the money. But looking 50, 40, 30, 20, even 10 years from now, I could see myself thinking, I would give anything to relive a minute of my life here now, for I have never, nor probably ever will, see and experience anything like this ever again.
Simpson is from Penssylvania. I just found out that he’s part Russian, and that his uncle’s rich with seemingly illegetimate reasons. Turns out his father’s supposedly KGR, or the Russian mafia, and his mother too. His parents dumped him when he was 3, and his other uncle took care of him while he was growing up. Now he says that he has a clue on where his father is, and that he probably knows where she was last. They supposedly split up, according to rumors he heard, his father’s somewhere in Chechnya or something. So he’s gonna try to track them down and connect some dots. I wish him the best of luck. He’s one phenomenal guy, a 20 year old.
Kulak. I wasn’t sure what to think of him. He’s a 20 year old. Everyone kind of figured he’s strange. He never really showered, we claimed he smelled (and after he left our tent to the other one next door when Porcayo came, it never smelled bad), he never hung out with us, played video games after video games, and was witnessed masturbating by Roberson who thought it was Miceli. So he woke up Miceli and well, both of them kind of watched him, I guess, him not knowing he had woken up a couple people. I think that’s a bad story to tell, but that’s reality. I suppose I got really exposed to that here. So embraced by the surreal society we know of as Cerritos, it’s different. Well, we got to talking one day. And to my fascination, we carried on our conversation like nothing. He was a great communicator, and was obviously smarter than me. And so I got to talk about Berkeley, San Francisco, and of course, homosexuals, and how I just don’t understand how that could be. And so I mentioned everything except the masturbating part, and he says he’s never told anyone this before, but he’s been raped before. I’m shocked, so the first thing out of my mouth is, by a guy? Yeah, he says, saw 3 psychologists, didn’t help, and ever since then when he was 9, he’s been pretty messed up. He says it might be one of the reasons why he joined the army. But you know what, he was very well mannered (even when he was back in the tents, although his etiquette regarding self preservation was below sub-standard) and was smart enough to take AP Biology, Chemistry, and Physics and pass all of them without studying much. This it the world I was exposed to, everyone else’s reality, the ghettos, the troubles you hear about but don’t want to believe it’s true because it’s horrible. But it happens. And it happens to the best of us, the spoils of life.
Jones. At first we started out on the wrong foot, and a lot of it had to do with me. She’s quite a character. Met a Marine online and got married soon after, leaving her state of Oklahoma (also her beloved Oklahoma State football team) to marry this Marine in Idaho. Here’s the thing. He’s paralyzed, partly below his chest on down. That’s before she met him. And so we got to talking, and here’s a woman that loved this man so much that she was willing to give up her life to live with a handicap. I didn’t understand it. I still don’t and probably never will understand it. I always thought she was a bitch with a beard. But you know, I see it differently now. Today we were joking around (something that was unimaginable even 2 months ago) and I said something I don’t quite remember. She said she would kick my ass. I said no, you wouldn’t dare: I’m a Raiders fan. She travels to Oakland at least twice a year to watch them in their home games.
I got to talking to Porcayo today, about the possibility of buying a new car (actually a used one) when I get back, thinking if I’m willing to spend 1000 for a computer, why not spend 5K or so for a used car? I certainly don’t need it, and I don’t think I’ll do it, but he got me to talking about it.
In psychology and sociology, we are taught that culture and society creates differing levels of spheres of influence, that family influence is the greatest influence of all. Everyone knows a highly educated pair of parents are more likely to upbring a highly educated son or daughter. That a kid born to a drug addict will probably be a drug addict himself. And we long for that. To understand and to be understood. To love and to be loved. Someone, or something must have demonstarted it first, to have been a model. It is almost, no, immediately and completely inconceivable to believe that a immensely microscopic energy burst into tremendous energy to create the human species we are realized today, with only that to reflect on, our very own meaning of happiness, love, hatred, betrayal, anguish, pain. Perhaps animals know of and are the best existing evidence of our God’s existence all too much better than we. Even a dog knows when it’s loved, when it’s betrayed. No matter how many billions of years, millions of generations, thousands of mutations have occured in the past, it is infinitely more difficult to believe in any species, or even just one specie to create emotion, to create something out of nothing, than it is to believe in an almighty God that loved us before and after our creation. We are a reflection of something. Perhaps the better analogy is God and his image on a rippling water. He is the entity, we are the reflection. While in many ways reflect that which is whole, in others it falls short, sometimes is completely opposite in its representation. And who wouldn’t feel betrayed when the image on the water is less than expected, less than it should be? How many times have we looked at our own image staring blankly back at us, disappointed at our own faults? Yet He who is without faults only sees a reflection of our own sins. And like a disappointed mother, father, he waits, yearning for us to grow into his love, to calm our waters and become more of a representation of who He is. God is Love. And His love for us endures forever.
Perhaps it is this love for us that he gave us free will. The intelligence to know the difference between our own definition of right and wrong, and with that came the responsibility of free will. And we have exercised that will to our own advantage, not recognizing that we are condeming the very one who has brought us into this world. We are a hypocrital being. While we question why there is so much suffering in the world, we question the very validity of free will.
It is equally ironic, then, that if that free will was taken from us, our denial of God may end but our disapproval of him may continue and even grow, for more than one will cry out, ‘it is unfair for this creation to have existed without our having our own free will.’ Now that we have been given it, we should cherish it, treasure it. Like corrupt politicians we speak of so freely, we have taken for granted that which matters to us the most. God and His love for us endures forever.
There is a popular saying we hear in the military often: freedom isn’t free. But this, I believe, should apply to everyone here. Free will isn’t free.
Why, in all our arrogance, do we need to continue to believe that we are the image and that God is only a reflection of us?
This is currently my support for Christianity. I don’t love God because he needs to be loved. I don’t need him because he needs me. No. Like CS Lewis said, our love to him must be like the relationship of light to mirror, female to male, echo to voice. Perhaps our own downfall is that our wit and arrogance have shaped our very own stone hearts that believe in an otherwise reversed role. And all the while, ‘if he who in Himself lacks nothing chooses to need us, it is because we need to be needed.’ So whether one is a hard soul or a saved one or not, it is difficult to argue, then, that science has disproved God, because God’s purpose does not lie in us, but rather our purpose lies in His. Perhaps it is because of that lack of evidence that its very own foundation is shaky, because there is no foundation. We look around ourselves and indulge into our own spoiled ingenious and marvelous creation, a creation out of someone else’s creation, that we have selfishly made that into our very own, looking no further, glorifying ourselves in our own creativity. But in the end, we are only fooling ourselves unless we bring ourselves to the truth. God is love. And his love for us endures forever.
I want to expand on this, as I learn to grow as a stronger Christian. I need to ask other Christians now, why do you believe in God? Is it simply out of fear of hell? Is it because it’s safer to play the game of life with one more card in your hand? Is it because you’ve been raised to believe in God and its religious dogma? Or is it because, like me and many others before and after me, now, you have realized, that we are only imperfect and often inaccurate representation of our Lord and Savior? That He came to this world not only so that our suffering may be like his, but also that our love may be like his as well? God is Love. And his love for us endures forever. Let us, in every way we can, be as perfect and accurate reflection of that Love.
I think that sounds more like a sermon than anything. But of course the ultimate question now, without a doubt, is no longer why I believe in God. Moving past that, I must question and try to answer our purpose of being here, how our presence has anything to do with a God that lacks nothing.