“Down range, when this happens, you just get out on the next patrol. You need to get it out of your mind. That is how you cure it. You cure it by doing more. Eventually you get home safe. But here I worry there is no next patrol. It is harder to cure. You are already home.”
Those were the words of the combat veteran who took down the shooter in the Colorado Springs Q Club massacre. His daughter’s boyfriend was murdered, amid too many other casualties.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra told warriors, “You should love peace as a means to new wars, and the short peace more than the long.”
From my own life experiences which might relate to such things, I would just say: BE yourself; don’t look at yourself or try to fix yourself, as though you could believe you are not already yourself. Assume a viewpoint, reach and withdraw from others and things, play, fight, get confused, have fun; just don’t ever forget that you can only be or not be, yourself.
Love peace as a means to new wars. Go out on the next patrol. Seek your enemy whom you can cherish and of whom you can be proud, and love your enemy.
And someday when there are no more patrols, when you stand on the suddenly quiet field of your greatest victory with all the world kneeling at your feet, and all the world’s treasure at your hands: then turn and walk away with nothing but the shirt on your back.
You will live forever.
Psychiatria delenda est!
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