TheButtonmen wrote:The two cents I'd throw in are you really really sound like you could use some discipline, I've always found that self-mastery is easier, more pleasant (self-understanding can be unpleasant at times) and quicker to achive then self-understanding. Take up long distance running, join a cadets program, train for a marathon or what have you; pick something that will bring you to the point where your wondering why your doing this, where your tired, sore and just wanting to say fuck it (Don't bother learning an instrument, that's the wrong kind of discipline). Once you chosen something just keep with it, there's a point (it will take a while to reach) where your bone tired, running on autopilot where enough of your brain shuts off that you reach that near medatative state others are mentioning without having to go through the whole hippy wishy washy finding yourself thing.
Quoted for Truth. I've been just skimming the part of the thread this is related to but I can attest to what Buttons is saying here.
1983. MCRD in San Diego. A new recruit was 7 weeks into the 13 week boot camp and was just about ready to lay down and die. Homesick. Missed his (soon to be)wife, (soon to be born)kid, mother, father, sisters, friends. Everybody and his brother yelling at him, couldn't do one damn thing right which was new in his experience. He had pretty much excelled at everything he tried up to that point in his life. School, sports, was popular and even had what no one in his class had yet. A marriage waiting once he finished boot camp and a kid on the way.
That state of mind and a five mile run in combat utilities, boots and a rifle, instead of sweats and running shoes made him about as miserable as I think you could be because he was wishing that rifle had at least one live round.
I got through it and even though boot camp got progressively harder physically after that, the simple of act of deciding to just push on, instead of just sitting down and crying (which I seriously considered) tapped a mental and emotional reserve I never would have thought I possessed.
And I've seen it happen in other people as well during my time in the Corps and after in civilian life. After boot camp I even had one of my drill instructors tell the folks who came down to see me graduate that he could tell almost to the second when he saw that worrying about me graduating boot camp as a training failure (an ongoing problem in the Corps then and was still one when I was retired) ceased to be a concern to him and the other drill instructors.
So Buttons has a good idea there.
[Quick edit]The Drill instructor never used the word "Training Failure" in front of my family. But I knew what he was getting when he told them "I knew he was going to make it" and then talked about that run.
My Uncle always use'ta say, 'You can't get no blood from a turnip.' .... He'd say the same thing about gettin' it from a stone, too.
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I never said nothin' back to him. You don't want mess with no freak that's searchin' around that hard for blood.
