The GORUCK spearhead moves forward toward the enemy and the challenges in our lives. In Special Forces, we revere the Native American warriors, masters of movement who above all understood one enduring truth:
The needs of the tribe before the needs of self.
For them, leadership was not a title. It was moving first so others could follow. There is much to learn from this Origin of ours. In America and the West, we are wealthier and have more things than we will ever need. Yet in what we seek most, a life that matters — too many of our tribe are falling short. The trappings of me, me, me are everywhere. You can “influence” and put yourself into crippling debt to buy shit you don’t need to live a life you don’t actually want. You can live without need, without others. You can talk yourself out of the path that God intended for you because it’s so easy to listen to self-appointed experts talking everyone out of the right things and into the wrong ones, for just a small piece of a pie that you’ll never taste.
Or, you can answer the calling you were meant to answer, right now.
I have failed much along my path the past year. I have expected too much, and helped too little. I have rationalized excuses and I have spent too much time pondering what a sane man is to do in an unreasonable world. I have not yet accepted that the world is never reasonable so long as people walk the earth. Control, therefore, is an illusion and a false idol I have spent far too much time seeking.
For the Comanches, those great Native American warriors we revere, there were no guarantees of a comfortable or a reasonable life to distract them. Life was hard, violent, uncertain. But they had each other, and that was enough. Can this ever be enough for us? I hope so.
The battleground we are on right now is for the human spirit. The calling is to fight for a world we believe in, a world of community and shared hardship, empathy and action, in service to the needs of the tribe.
This crazy beautiful messy imperfect world will FORGE THE SELF as we move, and strip us down to our essentials, if we let it. We mustn’t squander this opportunity on the trappings of the day, or on just ourselves, but rather harken back to the lessons of antiquity, and put the needs of the tribe before the needs of self.
