Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 80

Episode Date: November 19, 2021

Today's Friday episode will not be Q and A. Instead, I discuss a recent "incident" that I witnessed, and some thoughts on how to be better human beings. Enjoy

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If you're tuning in today, you're probably expecting some version of Q&A. And I'm going to tell you right now, well, damn it, you probably already figured it out via the written description of this particular episode. But I'm not going to do Q&A today because occasionally, I will run into situations or scenarios that I think are a little bit, perhaps I was going to say important, but I don't think that's the word timely to unpack. And this morning, as I was traveling back from the East Coast, I encountered one of those situations, and it directly tied into a speech that I had given the night before. So come with me on this journey, and hopefully

it will land us at a place at the end where you can get some meaning out of this particular episode. So yesterday, evening, I was actually out in Connecticut. I was invited to be the inaugural speaker for a VFW military ball. Now, the VFW in Danbury, Connecticut has been renamed after my very good friend, Jason Lewis. And as a tangent, when people ask me who the cover art is for the Fall Auto Friday episodes, Jason is actually the person standing next to me. And that picture is likely from 1997 or probably 1998 at the latest, taken out of the desert training facility that we went to multiple, multiple times together. Jason and I met at Buds. We didn't know each other before that.

And we got to know each other as Buds kind of went along because our class was large. We had 180 people on the first day. And at the last day, 18 original members of that class graduated. So I think it probably stands to reason that you get to know. people better as the training pipeline goes along. You can actually develop some pretty close bonds and relationships. They sent my entire Buds class to Fort Benning to go to jump school right after we graduated Buds, which was a complete and utter leadership failure. I would like to think that we were a massive thorn in the side for the Army instructors there. And probably they never made that decision again.

It just, they should have broken this up. They should have staggered it out there. But from there, That's actually where my class and the people that I started my career with, we splintered out. And some went to the East Coast, some went to the West Coast. Jason and I actually both went to Seal Team 5, went through our STT, is what it was called at the time, Seal Tactical Training, got our Tritens on exactly the same day. We were actually standing shoulder to shoulder the day that we got our tritons. And in our first two operational seal platoons together, which is a 24-month pipeline, 18 months of training, six months of deployment, both in 9-11. So we went to Japan first, which is actually where Jason introduced me to Guinness. That motherfucker gave me my first Guinness.

And I will, of course, be forever grateful for that because it's the most delicious and delightful beverage on the face of the planet. And if you don't agree with that, feel free to go fuck yourself. But I digress. What I'm trying to say is between 97 and 2001, probably the middle of 01, we spent almost every single day together. And we had very parallel career paths. I did my first rock climbing trip with him. We were actually swim buddies inside of our platoons. We were both point men and our second platoon.

He got married shortly before I did. I was in his wedding. He was in mine. He had kids just before my wife had kids. He has three. They're slightly ahead of mine in age. I also have three. Suffice to say, we spent a lot of time with each other.

And his death was actually the first close. death, the first death of a very close friend that I had in the military. And I remember where I was and what I was doing the moment I got that call and the impact that it had. And very shortly afterwards, we went out to Connecticut and I started to see the continuation of the impact of his death and the toll that it took on everybody that was around him. So that, in a nutshell, is who Jason was to me. He was one of my best friends. And I think about him. Yeah, honestly, I think about him every single day. And I'm very proud to actually be able to have that picture in the Full Auto Friday artwork. So for those of you that have asked about it, that's the answer to who the other individual is in that picture.

Now, to, before I talk about what I witnessed this morning, we'll talk a little bit about the speech. I was there to talk about the military and honoring the service of people who have given the ultimate sacrifice and died in service of this country and those that are continuing to serve. And, you know, one of the best ways for me to highlight service and what it means to me is through an answer that I gave to a question I was asked very recently at a speech. And the question was at the very tail end of a speech and somebody raised their hand in the back and they said to me, What am I the most grateful for in my time in military service? And what am I most grateful for from my time post service? And the very short answer to that, and I explained this yesterday at the speech. So if you're listening to this and you were at the speech, I apologize.

It's going to be slightly repetitive. And by that, I mean extremely repetitive. The short answer to that question is the thing I'm the most grateful for for my time and service is the context that I gained via the experiences that I had. But it's a lot broader than that. and I took the time to break it down further into some subcategories, and I think they're worth talking about it at least give the listeners or viewers, depending on how you consume this, some insight into why I feel the way I do about the world and where it comes from.

I am eternally grateful for the opportunity to have served in the military. It's a very unique thing to be issued the American flag. Now, I'm glad that everybody has the opportunity to buy one of those flags, whether it be in hat form, shirt, patch, fill in the blank. And I hope that people do. I hope that people are very patriotic and proud of the flag and what this country, the ideals, what it stands for. But there's a difference between buying the flag and being issued the flag. It's harder right now to get into the military than it is an Ivy League school. I don't actually have any studies to support that, but in talking to people about that process,

There's physical requirements. There are aptitude requirements. It's becoming very competitive. And your odds or the rate of people entering into the military, the application success is actually lower than those getting into an Ivy League. Or I shouldn't say Ivy League, Ivy League because I'm not positive. Let's just call it a four-year center of higher learning, where you leave with an advanced education.

I'm really fortunate and grateful that I had the opportunity to serve because I actually know quite a few people now or I know of quite a few people now from hosting the podcast that reach out to me and they tell me about their desire to serve but how they were rejected due to height, weight, diabetes, heart conditions, skin conditions, flat feet, you name it. And I didn't realize how lucky I was that I was actually able and given the opportunity to pursue the dream that I had as a very, very young man. I won't even call myself a young man because I knew I wanted to be a seal since I was 11. I was a kid. I didn't realize how lucky I was. And I will always be gratefully or eternally grateful for that opportunity. Another thing I'm grateful for is the appreciation that I have developed for trust. and integrity. I served in a community of individuals that you would watch from a physical

perspective, them turn their head to the left and right and ensure that the person to their left and right was ready to move before they did, was in a better position than they were in, that they were supporting those people to the left and right. And it's really hard to describe the level of capacity and capability you can develop once you have that level of teamwork and appreciation for the person to your left and right. I think it's devoid in a lot of people who don't get the opportunity to serve. It's not devoid in people. It's devoid in organizations because this is something that can be taught.

But it begins with leadership as the solution to most problems is going to be rooted in leadership. It's just not often focused on. But once you have experienced that, it is so incredibly hard to forget. I'm grateful for my exposure. Exposure to the love that the people that are, that I served with had for each other. There's no other word that describes it than that. A deep love for one another.

But probably more importantly, I'm grateful for the exposure to the suffering that I saw around the world. Most of the time that I was not inside of the United States in a non-training capacity, and oftentimes even in a training capacity, suffering or low substandard quality of life would be what defines the environments that we were in.

specifically when I was overseas on combat deployments. Once you see and experience some of the things that I have seen and experienced and the countries that I went to, it is impossible to erase them from your memory. And it shifts the way that you view where you call home and the things that you have the opportunity to pursue. I'm extremely grateful for my experiences. The good ones and the bad ones.

I wouldn't trade them for the world on both the good and the bad. side of the house. So I was shot February 5th, 2005 on a target that sat right in between Baghdad and Fallujah. And in that moment, and probably the months in a few years afterwards, I thought it was the single worst thing that it ever happened to me. And now looking back on that with 16 years in the rearview mirror, I view it as likely the best thing that has ever happened to me in my life. It changed who I thought or what I thought about myself. It changed what I thought about the occupation. It forced me to lift my head up and out of the world that I was completely consumed with

because I was doing everything that I had ever wanted to do at the level that I wanted to do it at. And it got me to shift my focus on what potentially might be next. It got me to the position of being a Buds instructor, which I actually look back on as being my most rewarding tour of duty and being able to have an input under the future of the SEAL community via the input into the students that were following in my footsteps 10 years later. I wouldn't be sitting here today if I hadn't been shot. I wouldn't have met the people that I have met. I probably wouldn't be living in Montana. I wouldn't have a podcast. And if I had continued to grind it out, there's absolutely no guarantee that I actually would still be alive.

I don't say that morbidly, but it's something that has to be considered as well. I would wouldn't trade that experience for the world. It is very likely the best thing that ever happened to me. And I'll end with the thing that I'm probably the most grateful for, or at least the most grateful for, because the opportunity one is definitely very high. Were the examples. And by that I mean the examples of selflessness that I still to this day struggle to describe. Individuals who would willingly and intentionally race you to a position that had a higher threat or danger because they wanted to bear the burden before somebody else did. They cared more about their people to their left and right than they did about themselves.

They put themselves in danger so that others would not have to. And for my time post-military, what I'm the most grateful for is my opportunity, which is exactly what it is. It's an opportunity and a privilege to try to take the experiences that I have had in my life, which I truly don't consider to be, they're not special. They're certainly unique, but I think all of these lessons could be learned. I think in other areas at other times, but I think I had the ability to have a very compressed, what would it be? Not a crucible.

I don't know if it's an environment or an ecosystem, but where all of these things were present so often that they just left an indelible mark on me. And I love the fact that I have an opportunity to take these lessons and try to import them on other people and other organizations into other teams and hopefully allow other people to level themselves up without having to go through some of the pain and suffering that was involved in learning all of these. Okay, so where am I going with all this? I open with, you know, I'm grateful for my experiences because of the context that it gave me. So this morning, I am sitting on a rental car van. It's early in the morning. I'm a lot of

of people are trying to make 6 a.m. flights and I'm sitting there. I schedule my time that it's going to take me to get to the rental car return so you can get on the rental car shuttle that you can get to the airport. Anybody who's ever traveled can know what can only be described, the shit show of that what it can sometimes be. And the bus is full, except for two seats. I'm one of the last people to get on. And there is a family in the back, specifically a mother whose name, I'm going to assume, was Karen. Very irritated. And the bus driver was getting ready to go. He was actually doing a really good job because she kept asking, how far is it to the terminal? How much more time do we have? How much longer do we have to wait here? And to me, I was sitting there and I immediately recognized

somebody that was very emotionally escalated in the situation. And I get it, right? Because you might miss a flight, which maybe I'll talk about that in a little bit, but it's not the end of the world. I actually wish more people would miss flights. So they realize it's really only a logistical issue. It's not a life-threatening issue. you. As we're getting ready to go, a family pulls up with young kids and we're talking car seats and they're asking the bus to wait. They're outside. Karen is on the inside. And she makes the choice to say to the bus driver, we need to leave now. I don't care what that other family needs. We have a six o'clock flight. She verbalized that. Nobody said anything. And actually,

the bus driver waited and he let the family come on. And it was two very young. kids and a husband and a wife. And they were in that phase where they were just trying to get shit happen so they could get on their flight as well, where you see them moving quickly, but not efficiently. So they're actually, they're wasting a little bit of energy and effort because they're moving so quickly to satisfy, you know, the people waiting that they're actually making, you know, short mistakes along the way that end up taking longer. My point in bringing that up is is that I have no doubt whatsoever that the woman who made the comment about I don't care. You know, I have a flight to catch. We have a flight to catch.

Was probably in that situation at one point in time in her life as well because she had two semi-adult slash young adult children with her. Who, by the way, when she made that comment gave her some substantial and serious side eye. Now, bringing all this up. Why am I bringing all this up. Well, I think it highlights the perfect opportunity to maybe reinforce one of my, the goals that I would maybe hope that comes from this podcast or talking about things like that. And that is the opportunity that I hope we all take to be better people. That's what I left this morning with. I can understand the headspace that that woman was in. And I can understand the headspace of the family that was trying to make it on the bus.

And I'm not, you know, both of them are valid. But it highlights for each and every one of us who have probably been in that position. I think that woman realized that, you know, that may be saying she didn't care about that other family and that we need to go. Probably wasn't the right thing to say. So that's probably step number one. Verbalizing it is step number two. And what I would have said to that woman if she had continued saying something,

which she didn't because I think she realized the error in. her ways, as I would have just said, hey, how would you have felt if you were that family asking for another minute or two minute worth of time so you could make your flight as well? You've probably been in that situation, and you know damn well how much it would have meant to you if that other family or if that bus would have waited. I've had moments where people have been extremely gracious and the impact that it has had on me, you know, it felt like at the moment you're like, oh my God, you just save the world. And it was just a moment. of people being gracious and empathetic, which I think this world needs a little bit more of.

We need less people acting like Karen's. When you find yourself in those situations, and let me be completely transparent, I've been that Karen. I've made those comments in my life. I'm not perfect in any of these things, but what my experiences have allowed me to do is have a better sounding board for when I feel that way. So the first thing that I do when I start feeling like that is I take a deep breath. Literally, I will take a deep breath. And I remind myself that whatever it is that I am doing, is it a matter of life and death? Guess what? The answer to that question, 99.99% of the time, is no. If the answer to that question is no, just take a moment and chill the fuck out.

be a better version of yourself. When that woman made that comment, her kids, like I said, gave her an immediate set of side eye because they both realized that it was a terrible example to set. And I also suspect if that family had been on the bus or one of those family members had been on the bus, she wouldn't have said shit because she realized it was the wrong thing to say. And again, I'm not trying to shit on this lady.

What I'm trying to do is create a, picture to tell a story that I know that we have all been in positions like this and to highlight the fact that you have a choice in how you behave. The worst case situation that would have happened for this family is they would have missed their flight. And oh, before that, how much of this situation could that woman have controlled? The answer to that is actually quite a bit. Because guess what? If you know you have to get onto a rental car shuttle and you're worried about the timelines being compressed, get up earlier and get there earlier. I've always found when it comes to travel. It's better to have excess time than not enough time. Because when we got to that terminal,

let me tell you right now, I don't think they made their six o'clock flight because there was a very long security line and really long check-in lines for all of the airlines. Having said that, I hope you did make your flight. A portion of me hopes that you made your flight. A portion of me hopes that you didn't. So you learn the lesson that it's actually just logistics. It's not life and death. And the best example that you could have shown was that of empathy and caring more about other people than yourself. A lesson that we can all learn, something that I still strive to be better at. I'm not perfect by any stretch of this imagination. When I closed the speech out, I talked about the best way to honor people who have given their life and service of this country. And maybe this

is slightly non-sequitur for this particular situation, because this particular situation, I'm trying to highlight that most things are not an emergency, until you may, you may, make them an emergency and then you have the ability to make them not an emergency again because it's not a matter of life and death. And if you can unwind that cycle for yourself, you're going to be a better person. When I closed out the speech, though, how do you honor people who have given everything that they have, who have sacrificed all of their tomorrows so we have a chance to be the best version of ourselves today? The best way I think that you can do that is to actually be somebody that is worth sacrificing for. To live a life that is so full that you wrung every drop out of along the way

that it is worthy of that sacrifice. In my opinion, you don't live that life and drip everything out of it only thinking about yourself. The life best lived, in my opinion, is not only about yourself, but how many people that you can elevate with you. So for everybody that is listening, the next time you're in a situation like that or you feel like you're losing control, take a breath, ask yourself, is it a life or death moment? Do I want to make a snarky comment? Or do I want to take a knee? Realize that these are likely matters of logistics and that things can be solved.

And maybe what I'm going to do is elevate somebody else with me instead of trying to push them down. You would be better for it. We'd be better for it as a society. And I think it's the best way that you can honor people. that dedicate their life to serving others. And that's it. I'll see you on Monday. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. Thanks for taking the time to tune in,

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And hopefully something in there looks like it would be an item you would like to wear around town. And then you can tell people what it is when they ask you. But that is it. The biggest thing I can say is thank you. I truly appreciate it. Until next time. See you.