I admire this lifestyle and the dignity, devotion, and passion required to participate in these teams. The men on these teams are experts in efficiency, productivity, stamina, creativity, and disguising fear. The men are highly disciplined athletes who have detached themselves from complacency. They are athletes who cannot lose because losing is death. Mediocrity is only seen in their civilian clothes so they can blend in and also because their vanity is not in their appearance but in their ability.
I found myself feeling the awe of warrior energy. I felt the courage spilling out of the lockers. I smelt the grime of fears faced. I saw the sparkle of diamonds in the sky. I childishly drifted through the facilities with giddiness admiration. I got to workout at their combat readiness training facility. It was equal to taking cuts in the underground cages at Chavez Ravine. There is no comparison to the professionalism exhibited by this environment. It was fitness heaven. I got to see the team room, cages of lockers for high tech devices, bags, gear, equipment, and personal items that resembled a real team locker room minus the pretty boy shit. I was in heaven. I forgot how invigorating it is to be part of a team of men. The culture felt like home. The facilities were an integrated storage space, fitness playground, and warrior living room. The space felt like nothing else before. I jokingly walked through and said this place could use an interior decorator. Most of everything is purely functional. Everything had character and if it didn't it was new in packaging. I mean everything had been used, was dirty, was marked, or was worn. There were decorations that held only sentiment, no glamor or pomp. There isn't room for cologne, mirrors, or luxury. Each man had their style of storage, organization and preparedness. It was inspiration to my desire to be simple yet character rich with strength.
Deployment is acceptance of readiness. This concept is rich with analogy. The human experience is the soul on deployment. The body a vehicle for patrolling the jungles and enemy streets of life's struggle. Passionate people who live in principle and discipline are Gorilla soldiers of the soul. Scowling the body for targets that influence terrorism, hate, and doubt. Deployment is being placed in harms way so you can get even closer to it.
Most inspiring was my time with my brother. I've seen him grow from a boy, to an adolescent, a young man, and now a man. I watched him be silly with innocence pitching game winning performances throughout little league. I hitched rides in early adolescence all around town, never driving the speed limit, and finding destinations that had us chasing excitement. I filled with him many nights of dedicated hope, mentally preparing for high school baseball games, committing to state championships won, and dreaming dreams accomplished and still lingering. We have always worked out together, we have always competed, and now we carry each other again into fatherhood. He and I are diamonds in the sky of hope, possibly courage, and definitely risk.
My brother from another mother and I haven't always been the stand up men we are destined to becoming. Over the last couple decades our drunken binges, filled with tail chasing and dick measuring, have matured into intoxicating discussions about morality and manhood, sometimes politics. This has been one of the most incredible shifts we have made. We sit and discuss our hopes more, still eventually finding ourselves wrestling with insecurity and longing for trust and love. I am fortunate to have companions on my path of manhood. They drift in and out of my life with timely grace.
We opened our chest revealing our hearts. I see myself in the brightness of his heart. I see my fear in the shadows. His fear for the well being of his wife, daughter and son reveal a concern I have never seen in him. He describes the comfort found in is wife in a way he has never revealed about a woman. I can now share my most vulnerable impasse because he has found the patience to withhold judgment. I can see his dilemmas. Dilemmas that in times past would have been hidden behind an arrogant handsome smile. I can see a man who held so many insecurities transforming into a lion with scars once hidden. I am excited to witness him love a woman truer than my judgement of him would have ever allowed me to believe. We are wild ones. He wilder ten fold, but cut from the same cloth, who are being harnessed by wisdom. The reckless charisma and dexterity we have exploited over our early manhood is being saddled and ridden by angels. We sit together now, still appreciating a few good drinks, still turning our heads at a beautiful woman, and still trying shake off the stigma we've earned by being a couple of arrogant shitheads. We have spent most of our lives wanting to be seen and admired, now we both sneak away into solitude, without the overwhelming need to be seen by anyone, except maybe each other. This is creating space for us to reveal our souls, without shame.
We are soldiers in different armies but fighting the same battle against our own understandings of injustice. I love this man and am grateful for his influence. He has been deployed many times before but this weekend he helped me taste the angst that starts the process of warfare, for my first time. I will take away from this special week an appreciation that despite the tenderness and encouragement released by each of us, he's still able to focus and orient to the calculated poised mindset needed to lead the worlds greatest warriors into battle.
I have perspective! Now, lets see how it inspires me. I came alive and realized that living with devotion to minimal, yet strategic and functional necessities, feeds my soul.
