Something that made me stop and think
Posted on September 26th, 2009 by Doug Hall
I just got the e-mail pasted below from Barry Bruns who I have the utmost respect for. He is retired from the Military following a spectacular career of leading change. His comments were about my New Book – North Pole Tenderfoot – that tells the story of my “rookie” adventures and misadventures traveling to the North Pole in Admiral Peary’s footsteps.
I’ve bold faced the last two paragraphs – as they raise an interesting question – about the need for perspective – the need to be stretched beyond your edge – so that you can appreciate the here and now. When you do – you never look at fear the same way – and you never accept low standards or goals.
Doug,Read your North Pole Tenderfoot Book this weekend. Loved it.It made me think of the first year at the Air Force Academy. Basic summer was 9 weeks of surpassing what we thought our limits were each and every day. The program was designed to challenge us past whatever we would face later in our careers and life, save being POW’s. That program came later . . .The entire first academic year was at once dreadful and inspiring. We could not quit for anything less than a serious medical problem basic summer, but could after Labor Day when we were accepted into the Wing as cadets, though whose rank was measured in negative units. The next nine months were nearly as physically challenging as the summer, but with the added pressure of 7 – 3 hr classes, intra murals or intercollegiate athletics, military training, etc, etc. Then, at the end of May when we thought we had it knocked, we had Hell week to show us a new threshold of inner strength. Then we KNEW we had arrived. Not so fast, the summer kicked off with Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape training. This was during the heart of the Vietnam war in 1968, and while the details are still classified, the week of training was realistic–to the point of putting about 40 of my classmates into the hospital for more than a day.In the next 41 years I’ve never come close to running into anything as challenging as that first year. I doubt that I ever will.Your experience trekking to the pole was your set point for inner strength. You’ve joined a unique and altogether too small of fraternity of those who have pushed or been pushed to their own edge of existence, found the wherewithal to push that edge out in front of themselves into new territory, and live to ponder it.The trick is to remember that the majority of those around us have not even come close to knowing such an edge exists, let alone stood on its brink. I was lucky to work with a majority of men, later women, who had all been there and back. Expectations for such a group can really never be too high.
Think of how the world would be if everyone had trekked to the pole, the top of the Himalayas, or some other experience that took them to, and beyond, their edge. . . .
Salute.bjb
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