October 9, 2007

• At the Risk of Rambling

  I have been reflecting lately about the military.  What makes one choose the military as a career choice or even a temporary choice for what to do with one’s life.  I guess this is not a surprising reflection considering my three and soon to be four sons in the military. 

  

  First Ian decided to go into the Army.  For him a decision to avoid further formal education.  Having been his teacher for all of his life, an understandable decision.  Ian has always been a hands-on learner.  Sitting still at a desk to learn from a book was always more of a sentence to him than anything else.  He knew his goals, an income, and to learn more about his beloved engines, and he found what he thought was the most sure path to that goal.  It wasn’t his fault that a war got in his way, that just added to the adventure.  Now he is home, in the guard and working and happy that the adventure is behind him.

  

  Then there is Patrick.  For him sitting and learning from a book is a pleasure unequaled.  He is to books what a sponge is to water.  I could not provide him with enough information on any and all topics that caught his fancy.  Now the decision to go into the Army reserves to make money to continue his education seems like a logical decision.  Especially considering his family’s inability to pay for a college education for him.  Certainly not the college of his choice.  But to go into the regular Army and then to re-enlist makes no sense to this mother. 

  

  Adam, loves learning, but to sit and do it is another thing entirely.  If school could have been on wheels and outdoors and at his speed all at the same time, I would have been able to satisfy Adam.  So I guess that college would have been out of the question.  So in a sense the Navy seems to be a wise choice.  All of the adventure, movement, new sights, sounds, stimulation that Adam requires along with constant learning.  Let us hope that he ends up satisfied with the basic enlistment.  His mother misses him.

  

  Now there’s Jason, who goes to take the ASFAB on Thursday.  The Army National Guard seems to be his goal.  Why, he doesn’t say.  I know that book learning isn’t for him, although he is in college at this time and seems to be doing very well.  But Jason doens’t like being poor and adventure certainly appeals to him and I know that a college campus so close to home is no place to get adventure.  So time will tell.

  I just pray that God takes care of all of them and that they find His will for them wherever they are. 

  • 1:08 pm
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