Life

I'm not sure how many of you read Time Magazine. In the most recent issue, I found an article that really caught my interest... and though its those mushy ones that I usually don't read, it turned out to be a great bit! I recommend you all take the time to read it (click here) - it will take you 10-15 minutes (oh no, what a waste of life!)

(and if this isn't your cup of tea, check out Anna's baby's daddy problem...)

Here are some choice excerpts:
"[His son and daughter] Skyler and Olivia had no adult notions of loss or judgments about helping me. Not long ago I had tied their shoes. Now they were tying mine. I had patched up their cuts and scrapes; now they were changing my dressings. Their sweetness permeated the house. Before Iraq, I had thought of parenting as another job--a lot of work with little payoff. Now it was a love affair. Skyler and I picked up our running chess game. Olivia helped me cook dinners--"one-handed spaghetti" was our specialty."

"A blizzard plowed into Washington one day in late January. We packed into Victor's car and went sledding. I stood at the bottom of the hill and watched. The sun sparkled on their snowsuits like tiny stars. They laughed and called out: "Watch this, Dad." "Did you see me, Daddy?" I waved and wept at these beautiful sounds, realizing how close I had come to never hearing them again.

Why did I risk it? I had scrutinized my motivation for picking up a grenade, but not the reason I had put myself in range of it. My rationale for going to Iraq as a career milestone no longer struck me as truthful. I already had scrapbooks full of big stories and enough money in the bank. I realized that something else had driven me, an old problem of self-worth: I was good because of what I did, not because of who I was. I had important roles as father, brother, lover and son. But without achieving in some material way, I felt empty and unseen. Journalism had provided a regular opportunity to reinvent myself. I had gone to Iraq for another fix.

Like any junkie, I thought only of myself, taking on a dangerous mission as if others didn't deserve a say, as if the chance of success for me was more important than the certainty of fatherhood for my kids. I didn't weigh the risk to them until I lay bleeding in the bed of a humvee, too late to spare them the fright.

It had taken a major loss for me to understand what I meant to others. Relationships rescued me. They got me out of Baghdad, into Walter Reed and back home. I received that help not because of a grade I had earned, a story written, or lives saved; it was for being me. I resolved to return the love by being less self-absorbed. I promised my kids I would stay out of war zones. My brother-in-law, Michael Flesch, came for a three-day visit, the longest time we had spent alone together in years. We hung out at Walter Reed by day and frequented Washington haunts by night.

And then there was Rebekah. I had finally realized why the divorce flap was so upsetting [he hadn't mentioned to Rebekah, his gf, that he wasn't divorced yet]. Relationships meant everything to her, and I had shortchanged her on candor. The open heart she had brought to Walter Reed deserved better. I apologized in a couple of long phone calls to California, promising full disclosure as the bedrock of our relationship from here on out."
"Lying awake that night, I was reminded of a conversation I'd had with Hal Wain, a psychologist at Walter Reed. I had sought him out a few months earlier to discuss why I had grabbed the grenade. Wain said I had one overriding objective: self-preservation. "That's what all heroes are made of," he said. "I have learned from guys coming back that the instinct to survive, the instinct to take care of oneself or others, is incredibly potent. I really don't care if you did it for your needs or for others; you did it. The end result would have been the same--you saved people's lives."

Wain defined heroism as quick response to a changing environment, like a driver who swerves into another lane for the purpose of avoiding an oncoming car and, in the process, saves the life of his passenger. "That wasn't his intent," he said. "But being flexible and shifting is a higher level of intelligence. The people who can't change die."
"I expressed my frustration that such a major ordeal had seemed to have so little effect on me--I was still the same impatient, competitive and self-critical person I'd always been. If I had acted so nobly, why didn't I feel more content? Wain's response struck me at the time as somewhat facile: the good deed, he said, had left me angry at myself. "You're thinking you could have done the same thing and didn't have to lose the hand. You love a perfect win and didn't get that perfect victory that you wanted and maybe deserved."

As I tossed and turned in the early hours of Independence Day, the simple truth of the psychologist's words hit me. It was true: I was mad at myself for failing to pull off a clean sweep. And it was that anger that was preventing me from savoring the achievement of a lifetime: saving my own skin and that of three others. My failure to get rid of the grenade before it exploded was only the first in a long list of wrongs I would have to pardon before I could finally put the ordeal behind me.

I had gone to Iraq for adventure and glory, discounting the interests of family and friends.

I had blithely ridden into danger with little to gain journalistically.

I had focused more on the loss of my hand than on the higher importance of preserving life.

The shortcomings were tough to swallow. But I was resolved to begin the process, keeping in mind Hal Wain's definition of heroism: self-preservation. By that standard, I had scored a perfect win after all.

The prize was the rest of my life."