The Year of This Book Will Change Your Life: Day Three
Advise your military today
The armed forces of Western powers are currently deployed across the globe in a variety of combat missions. It is your dty not only to support them, but to provide them with any tactical insignts you have gleaned from your personal study of the battlefield. Write to someone in your national military directly today, and claim your rightful place in the chain of command.
"Okay, that's not too difficult," I said. "There's even examples in the book of what to write. Excellent."
Immediately, I went into our home office and shuffled books and boxes around until I found my box of fine resume paper and Crane & Co. thank you cards. I grabbed a thick, black Flair pen from my pen cup and sat down to write an irreverent letter to a service member, only to realize that I didn't, in fact, have the name or address of a serviceman or woman.
So, though I'd sworn off being online for longer than it'd take to make this post, I signed online and tried to google my way to a military member's name and mailing address. People write to the military and send care packages all the time. How hard can it be, right?
Apparently, the US military is more secretive than you'd imagine. The government has decided to protect our troops from anthrax-laced letters by removing public lists of those serving in the military on active duty. The only way to get a letter to our military men and women is to go through an organization that needs to "verify your identity" -- usually via a donation made on your credit card to their organization -- and this process takes several days, as they mail you a receipt to make sure the person using the card has requested their service.
All of this takes time, and frankly, I didn't have a week or so to wait to do this. This today's assignment. Sure, I could write the letter today and mail it later, but I wanted to write to someone specifically, not in general and then personalize it as much as a form letter would. That'd suck.
So, I went through a website called Forgotten Soldiers Outreach, a website that promises to print and mail your letters (submitted through an electronic form) to a member of the military with your contact information, so they can return the letter if they wish. It wouldn't be personal, but it wouldn't really be a form letter either, to my mind, since I wasn't personalizing it at all, other than in talking about myself, to give the soldier a feeling of intimacy.
The next problem is that once I began writing, time slipped away, and soon I'd filled two pages without once actually advising my military service person.
It’s snowing outside - that light, kind of drifting snow that never sticks but makes the sky appear alive with a thousand dancing white fairies. On television, the Vikings are trouncing the Giants in the last regular season game, though to be fair, the Giants have nothing to lose or gain at this point, as they are out of the playoffs and a victory for them now will only effect other teams in their conference. As much as I’d like to think coaches and players do care about the overall rankings of their division rivals within a conference, I’m pretty sure right now the Giants are just thinking “Aw, fuck it,” and playing like it’s a just a game, which it still is to everyone except those invested in a team, either emotionally or financially. Especially emotionally.
I hope this holiday season finds you well overseas; as the snow whirls and drifts in front of my window, I wonder what the weather is like where you are. Are you, right now, watching sands whirling and drifting in a similar way as you clean your weapons, shine your shoes, or eat the grade D meat the military feeds the first-line defenders of our country? While I sit here, pulling my hands inside of my sleeves to keep out the cold, do you wish you could strip off your kit from the oppressive heat of the desert? And tonight, as I resign myself to sleep, knowing tomorrow will see me face another dreaded day on the job, do you too feel that sickening drop at the pit of your stomach, wishing you could wake up anywhere else, do anything else?
Or do you love your job protecting the citizenry of the United States? Do you rise in the morning not with dread and in trepidation, but with the rejuvenated energy and hope for a future that is brighter than our present? Do you relish fighting those that would do you or I harm if they could? Does your job leave you fulfilled in a way no one outside of your military family could understand?
I, myself, am nothing but unsatisfied with my job. I work in the judiciary of the great state of New Jersey, in child support enforcement. My job is to make sure that when two parents get divorced, the children are not forgotten in the mayhem of marital dissolution, to clarify the true intent of child support, which is to provide the child with a standard of living that he or she would have had in an intact family. My job is to tell litigants that child support is “more than just money”, that it’s about making sure a child is healthy and happy and well-taken care of, that visitation rights of the non-custodial parent is not predicated on his or her payment of child support to the custodial parent, and that only with two fully-supportive parents can a child hope to overcome the trauma of a divorce.
The problem, for me, is that my words ring hollow, that they fall on deaf ears. Too often, even after sitting with me, even after giving them my presentation about how to truly support a child, the non-custodial parent disappears from the child’s life, or the custodial parent pulls the child away from the non-custodial parent. The problem is that as much as we say that child support is about more than just money, after a family leaves my office for the first time, all we track is the money. We don’t track the family, track the progress and well-being of the child for whom we are collecting funds. Hell, we don’t even have a way to make sure the custodial parent is spending the child support money on food, shelter, clothing, or a college fund for the child and not alcohol or Jimmy Buffet tickets, as once happened in a custody case. As I watch parents go into arrears or other parents complain when a recently unemployed non-custodial parent fails to pay support the very day it’s due, my heart sinks into the dark pit of my stomach and I wonder, “Does anything I do even matter?”
But enough about me. I am not here to write a sob story to garner sympathy for myself or the plight of children of divorce. I am writing to tell you how proud I am to come from a country where young men and women such as yourself put their lives on the line for my freedom. You’ve never met me; in all likelihood, you never will. In fact, statistically, it’s most likely that I’ll never know if you’ve received this message, as most soldiers are too involved with engaging the enemy to have time to return this letter. And that’s okay. I’m not writing for any sort of reward or acknowledgement, only to tell you that I am proud of you - yes you - for volunteering to protect my freedom. I’m proud to know that there is someone out there fighting for the faceless masses of Americans and everything that we hold dear in this country.
I do not know why you’ve chosen to take on the task of protecting our country. Was it because of some deep, whole-hearted desire to serve and protect this great nation of ours? Was it because you were enticed by the promise of college tuition paid for you and a chance to see the world? Are you from a long line of servicemen and women and carrying a proud tradition of service to the United States?
The latter should have been my fate. I come from a long line of military men, all the way back to an ancestor who was an officer in the Civil war to my maternal grandfather who was a Marine in World War II and my father who served in the Air Force at the start of the Vietnam War. My mother was told that I would be a boy, so she named me Sean Patrick and bought me many Marine-branded items, hoping I would follow her father’s example and proudly march into military conscription. Unfortunately, not only did I emerge with a vagina instead of a penis, but was born into this world with asthma, near-sightedness, and depression - a trifecta of defects to end my family’s centuries of military tradition.
So, instead of carrying a family’s torch and good name into battle, I try to protect the youth of my state from having their life choices diminished while they are still young, still filled with the gift infinite potential. Still, at the end of the day, it feels like an unimportant job, inconsequential to the great sacrifice you have made for the benefit of us all.
You are in my thoughts, and I hope you return to us soon, safe and self-assured of the good you have done for not only Americans, but the world at large. Every day, you are making us safer and stronger, and for that, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you.
Warmest regards,
Elizabeth Williams
New Jersey, USA
Perhaps, before the year is up, I'll revisit this activity and send another letter, this time advising a service person in military strategy. I do intend to read The Art of War and The Prince this year, so perhaps there will be something gleaned from that which I can pass on, since I don't follow the war enough to feel comfortable giving any sort of military advice. Perhaps not. If nothing else, though, I've expressed my feelings about our soldiers to a faceless grunt who may have needed to hear it, and I've now shared the link with others, so that they may do the same, and that is definitely something outside my normal behavior and, dare I say it, a change to my life.
The armed forces of Western powers are currently deployed across the globe in a variety of combat missions. It is your dty not only to support them, but to provide them with any tactical insignts you have gleaned from your personal study of the battlefield. Write to someone in your national military directly today, and claim your rightful place in the chain of command.
"Okay, that's not too difficult," I said. "There's even examples in the book of what to write. Excellent."
Immediately, I went into our home office and shuffled books and boxes around until I found my box of fine resume paper and Crane & Co. thank you cards. I grabbed a thick, black Flair pen from my pen cup and sat down to write an irreverent letter to a service member, only to realize that I didn't, in fact, have the name or address of a serviceman or woman.
So, though I'd sworn off being online for longer than it'd take to make this post, I signed online and tried to google my way to a military member's name and mailing address. People write to the military and send care packages all the time. How hard can it be, right?
Apparently, the US military is more secretive than you'd imagine. The government has decided to protect our troops from anthrax-laced letters by removing public lists of those serving in the military on active duty. The only way to get a letter to our military men and women is to go through an organization that needs to "verify your identity" -- usually via a donation made on your credit card to their organization -- and this process takes several days, as they mail you a receipt to make sure the person using the card has requested their service.
All of this takes time, and frankly, I didn't have a week or so to wait to do this. This today's assignment. Sure, I could write the letter today and mail it later, but I wanted to write to someone specifically, not in general and then personalize it as much as a form letter would. That'd suck.
So, I went through a website called Forgotten Soldiers Outreach, a website that promises to print and mail your letters (submitted through an electronic form) to a member of the military with your contact information, so they can return the letter if they wish. It wouldn't be personal, but it wouldn't really be a form letter either, to my mind, since I wasn't personalizing it at all, other than in talking about myself, to give the soldier a feeling of intimacy.
The next problem is that once I began writing, time slipped away, and soon I'd filled two pages without once actually advising my military service person.
It’s snowing outside - that light, kind of drifting snow that never sticks but makes the sky appear alive with a thousand dancing white fairies. On television, the Vikings are trouncing the Giants in the last regular season game, though to be fair, the Giants have nothing to lose or gain at this point, as they are out of the playoffs and a victory for them now will only effect other teams in their conference. As much as I’d like to think coaches and players do care about the overall rankings of their division rivals within a conference, I’m pretty sure right now the Giants are just thinking “Aw, fuck it,” and playing like it’s a just a game, which it still is to everyone except those invested in a team, either emotionally or financially. Especially emotionally.
I hope this holiday season finds you well overseas; as the snow whirls and drifts in front of my window, I wonder what the weather is like where you are. Are you, right now, watching sands whirling and drifting in a similar way as you clean your weapons, shine your shoes, or eat the grade D meat the military feeds the first-line defenders of our country? While I sit here, pulling my hands inside of my sleeves to keep out the cold, do you wish you could strip off your kit from the oppressive heat of the desert? And tonight, as I resign myself to sleep, knowing tomorrow will see me face another dreaded day on the job, do you too feel that sickening drop at the pit of your stomach, wishing you could wake up anywhere else, do anything else?
Or do you love your job protecting the citizenry of the United States? Do you rise in the morning not with dread and in trepidation, but with the rejuvenated energy and hope for a future that is brighter than our present? Do you relish fighting those that would do you or I harm if they could? Does your job leave you fulfilled in a way no one outside of your military family could understand?
I, myself, am nothing but unsatisfied with my job. I work in the judiciary of the great state of New Jersey, in child support enforcement. My job is to make sure that when two parents get divorced, the children are not forgotten in the mayhem of marital dissolution, to clarify the true intent of child support, which is to provide the child with a standard of living that he or she would have had in an intact family. My job is to tell litigants that child support is “more than just money”, that it’s about making sure a child is healthy and happy and well-taken care of, that visitation rights of the non-custodial parent is not predicated on his or her payment of child support to the custodial parent, and that only with two fully-supportive parents can a child hope to overcome the trauma of a divorce.
The problem, for me, is that my words ring hollow, that they fall on deaf ears. Too often, even after sitting with me, even after giving them my presentation about how to truly support a child, the non-custodial parent disappears from the child’s life, or the custodial parent pulls the child away from the non-custodial parent. The problem is that as much as we say that child support is about more than just money, after a family leaves my office for the first time, all we track is the money. We don’t track the family, track the progress and well-being of the child for whom we are collecting funds. Hell, we don’t even have a way to make sure the custodial parent is spending the child support money on food, shelter, clothing, or a college fund for the child and not alcohol or Jimmy Buffet tickets, as once happened in a custody case. As I watch parents go into arrears or other parents complain when a recently unemployed non-custodial parent fails to pay support the very day it’s due, my heart sinks into the dark pit of my stomach and I wonder, “Does anything I do even matter?”
But enough about me. I am not here to write a sob story to garner sympathy for myself or the plight of children of divorce. I am writing to tell you how proud I am to come from a country where young men and women such as yourself put their lives on the line for my freedom. You’ve never met me; in all likelihood, you never will. In fact, statistically, it’s most likely that I’ll never know if you’ve received this message, as most soldiers are too involved with engaging the enemy to have time to return this letter. And that’s okay. I’m not writing for any sort of reward or acknowledgement, only to tell you that I am proud of you - yes you - for volunteering to protect my freedom. I’m proud to know that there is someone out there fighting for the faceless masses of Americans and everything that we hold dear in this country.
I do not know why you’ve chosen to take on the task of protecting our country. Was it because of some deep, whole-hearted desire to serve and protect this great nation of ours? Was it because you were enticed by the promise of college tuition paid for you and a chance to see the world? Are you from a long line of servicemen and women and carrying a proud tradition of service to the United States?
The latter should have been my fate. I come from a long line of military men, all the way back to an ancestor who was an officer in the Civil war to my maternal grandfather who was a Marine in World War II and my father who served in the Air Force at the start of the Vietnam War. My mother was told that I would be a boy, so she named me Sean Patrick and bought me many Marine-branded items, hoping I would follow her father’s example and proudly march into military conscription. Unfortunately, not only did I emerge with a vagina instead of a penis, but was born into this world with asthma, near-sightedness, and depression - a trifecta of defects to end my family’s centuries of military tradition.
So, instead of carrying a family’s torch and good name into battle, I try to protect the youth of my state from having their life choices diminished while they are still young, still filled with the gift infinite potential. Still, at the end of the day, it feels like an unimportant job, inconsequential to the great sacrifice you have made for the benefit of us all.
You are in my thoughts, and I hope you return to us soon, safe and self-assured of the good you have done for not only Americans, but the world at large. Every day, you are making us safer and stronger, and for that, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you.
Warmest regards,
Elizabeth Williams
New Jersey, USA
Perhaps, before the year is up, I'll revisit this activity and send another letter, this time advising a service person in military strategy. I do intend to read The Art of War and The Prince this year, so perhaps there will be something gleaned from that which I can pass on, since I don't follow the war enough to feel comfortable giving any sort of military advice. Perhaps not. If nothing else, though, I've expressed my feelings about our soldiers to a faceless grunt who may have needed to hear it, and I've now shared the link with others, so that they may do the same, and that is definitely something outside my normal behavior and, dare I say it, a change to my life.