Guest Blog: I AM THE SHIELD OF FREEDOM

“To me, on this anniversary of September the 11th, what comes to mind is not that day, but what happened after.”

I AM THE SHIELD OF FREEDOM

By David Daedalus

My name is David and I am a veteran of the United States Coast Guard. I was an active duty member from May 30th, 2001 until the same, 2005. As you, my clever reader, have no doubt already surmised, I was serving my country the day of September the 11th, 2001. I served during the formation of the Department of Homeland Security (of which the Coast Guard is now a component), the invasion of both Afghanistan and Iraq, and the implementation of the Patriot Act. In addition to being attached to a cutter (what the Coast Guard calls their ships), I volunteered and was deployed to the middle east as part of USCG PATFORSWA (Patrol Forces Southwest Asia) unit 3950 where I spent time in Bahrain, Kuwait, and the North Arabian Gulf.

Today, on the tenth anniversary of the vile act of mass murder and destruction wrought by fucktard fundamentalists, the question I keep hearing is, ‘Where were you when…?” It’s all over the radio, all over the internet, on everyone’s minds. Stories about loved ones lost in the towers, brave first responders exhibiting more courage in that one day than most of us muster in the whole of our lives, and stories about United Flight 93. On the tenth anniversary of this horrific, inexcusable, malicious act of terror, I can’t help but reflect on where I was on September the 11th…2003.

Pier 36. Coast Guard base. Seattle, Washington. It is a quarter to midnight and I am relieving the security watch stationed on the pier at which my ship was moored. The moon is a fingernail etched into the sky and there is very little light across the water. Armed with an M16 and a sharp eye, I am tasked with protecting the ship from terrorist attack. For days prior, and with metronomic consistency, the command drilled into us the importance of standing a vigilant watch on the anniversary of 9/11; that we were in danger, and that the terrorists could be anywhere or anyone. The Coast Guard’s newest recruiting slogan rang true in my ear:

I AM THE SHIELD OF FREEDOM.

Specifically, I am keeping a watchful eye for divers. The thinking is that unless the crew is vigilant, a diver can easily approach the ship, attach an explosive, and slip away. If that were to happen, both my home and my sleeping shipmates would be lost in a vesuvian explosion of blood and fire. To some of you this may seem far fetched, but before you go thinking this is something ridiculous to worry about, remember that this is exactly the sort of attack that nearly sank USS Cole in 2000. Placing aside the fact that the Cole was moored in Yemen at the time and my ship was at home in Seattle, it’s only fair to point out that the command did have some justification for being concerned.

After two hours of marching up and down the long cement pier and trying to keep warm, I hear something in the water. Figuring it was either my imagination or something completely innocuous, I shuffle over to the end of the pier and look out into the inky black water. Even with my flashlight, it’s difficult to see too far away. Sleepy and bored, I am just about to turn away when my eye catches the barest hint of movement. I squint and look hard, bringing my flashlight to bear upon the phantom. Just as I shone the light upon it, I see it. A slick black form diving under the water towards the ship.

My heart instantly kicks into overdrive and thumps loudly like a kick drum in my ears. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. For a second I forget even to breathe. I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen. I mean, HOLY FUCKING SHIT. THERE’S A TERRORIST DIVER IN THE WATER AND HE’S GOING TO BLOW UP MY SHIPMATES!

Adrenalin saturates my chilled body as with hands shaking I grab my radio to alert the quarterdeck watchstander (the person aboard my ship minding the gangway between the pier and the cutter) of the situation. At top speed, and now too scared to be cold, I bolt down the pier to get a better look. Frantic, I scan the water hoping to catch a glimpse of the intruder.

Splash.

Motion.

Again, I spy the black mass. It breaches the security perimeter separating the Puget Sound from the base and has changed course. It makes a beeline right for me, then goes under again.

Scared shitless, I draw my rifle. With an audible click, my thumb I disengages the safety, and I place my trembling index finger atop the trigger. I’d never even been in a grade school fist fight and now I was about to kill a human being. Military training barely restrains the instinct to freak out and just start shooting. I’m a sitting duck where I am, atop a pier under a tall floodlight, but there’s no choice. I have to protect my shipmates. I can’t just let this happen.

I AM THE SHIELD OF FREEDOM.

Nearly a full minute goes by when suddenly, right next to me, it breaches the surface of the water.

“U.S. COAST GUARD STOP OR I’LL SHOOT!” is nearly out of my mouth when I realize the terrorist is a baby sea lion. I shit you not, the cutest, wide-eyed, innocent fucking thing I’ve ever laid eyes on had seen me from afar and came over to play. I nearly blew its brains out of the back of its little head.

The world pauses for a split second and I see myself in the third person, and I don’t like what I see. I see myself standing there, terrified, pointing a gun at a harmless baby animal. I see that I’d become so afraid of the implausible, the probable never entered into my mind. As I engage the safety and lower my weapon, it hits me: I’m not ‘The Shield of Freedom’,

I’m a frightened idiot…with a gun.

Shame welling up in my boots, I alert the quarterdeck nothing is wrong and resume my watch. I’m in bed before dawn and with a worried mind and heavy heart I fall into a fitful slumber.

I think about that day often; about how swept up I was by the tsunami of hysterical fear, and what I nearly allowed that fear to drive me to do. To me, on this anniversary of September the 11th, what comes to mind is not that day, but what happened after. How we allowed fear to overwhelm us. How we started relating everything to terrorism and that horrible day, even when it made no sense to do so. How we turned on one another and gave up our fundamental freedoms for the illusion of safety. How we literally endeavored to make torture legal and acceptable because we were afraid. How we became a nation of frighted idiots…with guns.

9/11 was a horrific day, one for which there is no excuse, no mitigating explanation, and one that could no go unanswered. My aim is not one of a 9/11 apologist, but to point out part of adulthood is making choices, assessing the effectiveness of those choices, and using that information to make future decisions. When I think about that night, about those innocent eyes staring at the muzzle of my M16, I am ashamed of what I almost allowed fear to goad me into doing. While the memory is a painful one, it must be acknowledged and assessed honestly if I am sincere in my endeavor to use the lessons of the past to build a better tomorrow.

On September 12th, 2001, we had a choice to make. A gauntlet was thrown down challenging our resolve to uphold our American values of respecting the rule of law, respecting the inalienable rights of the individual to preserve a free society for all, and to act globally as a champion of justice. We had a choice to either fight for those values or abdicate them and simply fight. We chose the latter. On this, the tenth anniversary of that black day, I find myself not thinking about the day of, but what happened after, and how it’s not to late to do better, to be better, to be the America I know we can be:

The Shield of Freedom.

***

David Daedalus is a writer, a filmmaker, and a graduate student of Philosophy at San Diego State University.

[Photo courtesy of David Daedalus, pictured second from the right.]

Notes on Adulthood: July 26

It has been months since I have posted our Notes on Adulthood segment. Notes on Adulthood is a neat way to explore some of the little lessons we learn from livin’ each day. So, I am bringing it back! Don’t forget we take contributions, so feel free to send me an email or a tweet at welcometoadulthood@gmail.com or at @AdulthoodMara. Let us know what you have learned this week!

Here are my notes on adulthood (both quotations!) from this week:

1) The other day, a very cool adult (who is very well established in her profession) told me, “You never do stop asking yourself what you want to be when you grow up.’” Duly noted.

2) Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak once recounted a story of young fan. “A little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it,” Sendak recalled. “I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over.

I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, ‘Dear Jim: I loved your card.’ Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, ‘Jim loved your card so much he ate it.’ That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”

I like this quote. It reminds me that love is sometimes just too big, too special, too rare and wonderful to explain in words. And love is out there, friends! Find it, feel it, and eat it up. Every piece of it.

Lessons on Adulthood: November 22

Life is about learning lessons–that is how we keep growing and evolving. Lessons I learned this week involve friendship, relationships, and…shopping!

1) Friends come and go — even friends that you think are kindred spirits. But you see their faults, and you think, “But I am special. They would never do that to me.” And then it happens. A betrayal can be as small and unspoken as a silent phone, an unanswered call, or a secret. But the loss is heavy, the rift is wide. So you try to accept the change, set aside the bitterness, appreciate them for their moment in time, and move on. Call it a lesson learned.

2) Recently, I ventured to Sonoma for a weekend of wine and hibernating for a dear friend’s bachelorette party. One of the days we were there, we drove down Sonoma’s coast to an epic iPod soundtrack and then stopped at a little restaurant for dinner. We had to wait a few minutes for a table, so we stood outside on the patio deck looking at the ocean.

A couple, who appeared to be in their early 50s, was also waiting for a table. We chatted with them a bit about where we were from and why we were in Sonoma. They were vacationing for their 25^th wedding anniversary.

“Do you have any advice for the bride-to-be?” I asked them, expecting some cheeky response.

The couple thought for a moment and the woman said: “When you get married, you have fights sometimes, you might disagree, you might even be attracted to another person, but on our wedding day, we made a vow to always choose each other. So, no matter how angry we may be when we go to bed, no matter how stressful life may get, we wake up every day and think ‘I choose you’ and we are happy.” (Note: it is not “I chose you”, it is “I choose you.”)

Then the husband spoke. He had a slight accent which he indicated was because he was born in Israel. He said, “Never hit below the belt. Because hitting below the belt leaves a hole of hurt so big that no amount of apologies can ever fill it. And you can never take the words back.”

Duly noted.

3) And on a lighter note….From Kaitlan, a reader in Arizona, “Adulthood is seeing a pair of boots you want, being able to buy them without devastating your budget, and walking away because it is the season to give.”

(Photo via AlyssaFilmmaker on Flickr.)

Notes on Adulthood: October 04

Everyday we learn something. That is how we grow! Here is what I learned this week.

1. Freelancing = hustling.

2. When friendships feel like work, you’re not doing it right.

3. The best part of being a food writer is getting free dessert(s)!!!

What about you? What did you learn this week?

-Morgan

Notes on Adulthood: September 27

Adulthood is about learning lessons and growing from each experience. Lessons learned this week:

1) Never EVER trust your face near a dog. Even if you know the dog pretty well, never EVER put your face close enough where they can bite it. (Case and point: my face, pictured above.)
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Notes on Adulthood: August 30

Everyday we learn something. This is how we grow. Here is what I learned this week.

Guest Blog – Life of an Emerging Adult: An Uneven Slouch Toward Adulthood

Our discussion continues about last week’s New York Times article about Twentysomethings as “emerging adults.” Our guest blogger, Lukus Williams, provides his witty and insightful take on the ups and downs of unemployment as a recent college grad. Enjoy!

Life of an Emerging Adult: An Uneven Slouch Toward Adulthood

By Lukus Williams

April 15, 2010

Just when it was appearing to turn bleak, I got a response! I’ll be interviewing next week at a large university for an editorial assistant position I applied for nearly a month ago. This is the exact, perfect position for me and words simply cannot describe how psyched I am for this chance. If I get this job I’ll be able to move back to the city I love so much and be closer to all my friends once again – essentially I’ll get my life back, which has been on hold ever since graduation.

April 22, 2010

I aced it! He shoots, he scores! After running the interview through my head, and calling up every friend to get their thoughts… I just know I got the job. My portfolio, my experience, my enthusiasm – they were impressed, I could tell. The definitive way in which they spoke about the nuts and bolts of the job after the questions were through (*when* you start, etc…) is a sure sign I’ll be packing my bags soon. This is finally happening, I’m getting my life back.

April 29, 2010

Received my rejection letter today: no job. They wrote as if I had been the runner up in a competition, that over eighty people had applied and they only interviewed the four most qualified. They were incredibly impressed by me, but in the end decided to choose someone with an advanced degree in the field.

Seriously? What? Not only do I have to beat out over eighty people for a chance to be interviewed based on my cover letter writing skills alone, but now I have to compete for entry-level jobs, that barely pays a living wage in San Diego, with hopefuls who have Master’s degrees? How am I ever going to come out on top in that situation? I need to spend another $20,000 on education so that I can make $30,000 a year?

I thought this was my ticket out of my parents house. I thought this was the start of my life again. I thought I could finally begin doing all the things I’d been dreaming about, all the things my college education would allow me to achieve. Will I ever get out of here?

August 26, 2010

I’m up to five interviews now since my first one back in late April. Each one I do better than the last, and each one I receive an even more heartfelt rejection from my almost-employer:

“We had over 100 applicants, and interviewed five of the most outstanding candidates. You truly had exceptional skills and interviewed well, however we have decided to offer the position to a more experienced candidate, who has accepted.”

The job hunt, the interview process – they are a competition, only there is no prize for second place.

After reading Robin Henig’s piece, “What Is It About 20-Somethings?” I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or hurl my laptop across the room.

The author haughtily muses about the advantages and disadvantages of letting us 20-somethings meander into the responsibilities of adulthood, as if there is some committee that decides what a generation should be doing, while I pray that my 1400^th job application isn’t just being tossed into the void. If there is some societal authority allowing me to languish in this lifeless existence in the doldrums… I would like to kindly ask him/her/it/them to cut it out and let me move on.

Where Henig sees an awkward moment of exploration and questioning, wondering if maybe we should all be cut off and told to “find something, anything, to put food on the table and get on with [our] lives,” I just thank God/Flying Spaghetti Monster/Your Favorite Deity that my parents don’t just “cut [me] off.”

What would happen if I was kicked to the curb? Easy answer, I’d be homeless at best. Some “tough love” isn’t going to erase a 20% unemployment rate. Henig’s audacity astounds me to no ends; presuming that I and other’s in my age group are futility attempting to hold back the flood of adult life and responsibilities, but the reality of our situation could not be further from her postulating.

The reality is, I don’t date anymore – I have no desire to even entertain the possibility with my life the way it is currently. The longer this goes on, the further and further away I get from meeting her milestones in the most ideal fashion. When I finally get back on track, I’m not going to have some wonderfully advantageous career thanks to my excellent college degree. No, I probably won’t even make enough money to avoid needing roommates and simultaneously pay my student loans back. And owning a house, or even a car is going to be totally beyond my means – exactly the type of scenario I want to start a family in, right?

I don’t need sympathy, but some empathy would definitely be nice. Mostly, I’d really just like to kill this blatantly false idea that every college grad goes off to search for the meaning of life and their purpose in it while becoming a drain on their parents and society.

{Photo credit here goes to Mike Licht, Notionscapital.com via Flickr}

The Roaring Twentysomethings and Reclaiming Adulthood: A Response to The New York Times

Last week the New York Times published an article entitled “What is it about TwentySomethings?” that has generated frenzied conversation around the web. I have purposefully avoided reading The Slate’s, and the Huffington Post’s, and Salon’s responses to the article until I could really delve into the piece, draw my own conclusions, and bring them to Welcome to Adulthood for discussion[*]. At the end of it all, I want to hear from you. After all, we are a blog about adulthood, so this is a territory we are experts on – whether we are twentysomething or not.

[*]I have said it before, and I will say it again, we are so lucky to have a brain trust of super smart, interesting, and insightful readers who, time and time again, prove just how valuable collective wisdom is. A fellow blogger once told me that the soul of a blog is in its comments, and I really believe that is true. Thanks again for all your infinite wisdom, Adulthooders, and keep those comments coming.

The author of the NY Times piece, Robin Marantz Henig, relies on one main source as she explores her topic, a professor of psychology at Clark University named Jeffrey Jensen Arnett. Arnett’s claim is that twentysomethings represent a new developmental stage that he calls “emerging adulthood.”

According to Arnett, this stage is when twentysomethings are finding their way, either in college or out of college, with a job or without, and he sees this as a time period of self-exploration.

He believes that in the 21^st century, where there is less pressure to “become an adult” so quickly (he is equating adulthood as marriage, good job, house, and family, pretty much in that order), twentysomethings are instead using the time to languish in the decade. Many live at home with their parents, many do not have good jobs or a career path, and many engage in serial dating (not a term he uses, but he may as well have) as opposed to getting married.

Henig offers interesting data (or should I say data couched in judgement, see my comments following) to support Arnett’s claims:

The 20s are a black box, and there is a lot of churning in there. One-third of people in their 20s move to a new residence every year. Forty percent move back home with their parents at least once. They go through an average of seven jobs in their 20s, more job changes than in any other stretch. Two-thirds spend at least some time living with a romantic partner without being married. And marriage occurs later than ever. The median age at first marriage in the early 1970s, when the baby boomers were young, was 21 for women and 23 for men; by 2009 it had climbed to 26 for women and 28 for men, five years in a little more than a generation.

But the problem with Henig’s rhetoric here is that a loaded sentence frames her data: she likens the 20s to a black box, with “a lot of churning.” A black box reads to me as a mysterious, closed-system only really examined in times of disaster. And “a lot of churning” seems to indicate that within this closed-system is a lot of noise and movement, but not much logic.

At another point in the article Henig writes:

The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain un­tethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life.

Here she is suggesting that the twentysomethings’ lack of relationship and good job, as well as taking the option of a graduate degree or Teach for America are because they are languishing in not having responsibilities. The word “forestall” suggests to me an active kind of laziness that is premeditated in an effort to put off responsible living.

But it might not be our fault, she intimates.

Henig cites some studies on how the brain is still not fully mature in these twentysomething years, and thus we are not ready to be stable and mature adults. She also talks about how many parents aid and abed the twentysomethings by continuing to support them emotionally and financially while they find their path. So, for twentysomethings it is Nature and Nurture that contribute to their lack of “adult” motivations, at least that’s what Henig seems to suggest.

While she does mention the economy, and that the economic downturn may have something to do with this generation’s challenges, it comes near the conclusion of the article as an afterthought:

Of course, the recession complicates things, and even if every 20-something were ready to skip the “emerging” moratorium and act like a grown-up, there wouldn’t necessarily be jobs for them all. So we’re caught in a weird moment, unsure whether to allow young people to keep exploring and questioning or to cut them off and tell them just to find something, anything, to put food on the table and get on with their lives.

In the end, Henig endorses Arnett’s call for a “middle road” that lets twentysomethings “meander” but which ultimately makes them better and more successful real adults (I say real, because that seems to be what they are implying with this “emerging adulthood” business.) If this is true, she says, “then Arnett’s vision of an insightful, sensitive, thoughtful, content, well-honed, self-actualizing crop of grown-ups would indeed be something worth waiting for.”

One problem I have with the article is that the tone seems snarky. Her use of loaded words and phrases like some of the ones I have already pointed out, as well as some I didn’t point out but should have (“…to cut them off and tell them to just find something, anything…”), makes it read like an accusation rather than an expository article. If an author comes off too judgemental, she is bound to expect some criticism. And maybe it’s because I am 29 and feel defensive. Or maybe it is because I blog about adulthood and feel there is real value in learning lessons all throughout your life, not just in your twenties. Either way, I think her tone didn’t do much for her credibility and ethos.

As far as the actual argument, I think there is a lot of truth to the idea that the twentysomething years are a lot more complicated than they used to be. In fact, it is something we have even blogged about before on WelcometoAdulthood.

What Henig’s article lacks is a bigger-picture contextual analysis of the changing and challenging road that twentysomethings have faced since probably the 1960s. She also does not take into consideration the complex racial and gender politics that existed historically (and still do in many ways) that severly limited opportunity for many twentysomethings.

Recently on Adulthood, we learned from our discussion comments on feminism and the modern housewife that the feminist movement allowed women to make choices. It opened up opportunities and dialogue for women, and slowly but surely affected change unto the workforce and into the domestic realm. Women today can choose their path, and don’t have to run off at 18 years old and get married and start a family if they don’t want to.

I take issue with the term “emerging adult” because it insinuates that during this twentysomething period our decisions are uninformed and immature. To make a choice to find a career path before starting a family is, in my view, more of a self-actualized adult then the under-employed, unskilled 18 year old who gets married and starts a family. (And here is my disclaimer: not that being 18 and having a family is a bad thing, but these days I think it probably is a lot harder.)

And this isn’t just about women. Men too have more choices without the pressure to “settle down” and start a family and bring home the paycheck every week. Men and women alike are choosing to go back to graduate school not just “for lack of better options” (though the economy does really suck, and grad school isn’t a bad decision when the alternative means sitting around doing nothing in between your entry level retail job at The Gap) but because we will be more competive in the workforce, and thus have more choices with a graduate degree. And putting in the hard work and financial investment into college and graduate school is a very adult decision because it insures there will be choices.

And choices=security. And secure adults hopefully means secure families one day. And if that takes me ten years to work towards, I am entering my thirties a wiser person.

Instead of framing it like Henig does, “Why are so many people in their 20s taking so long to grow up?” (she actually does write that) we need to celebrate our twentysomething years. I contend that twentysomethings are not “emerging adults” but should be more appropriately labeled “evolving adults.” The lessons learned during the twenties are lessons that previous generations of adults never had the CHOICE to learn.

Being given the option to learn these lessons on our own timeline, in the long run probably will make us more evolved adults then the generations that preceded us.

And though I’m destined to be one of those “forstalling” twentysomethings that doesn’t have kids until well into their 30s, I’ll proudly pass down the same sense of wonder, mixed with my decade-of-twentysomething-wisdom, to my kids and applaud them all along the way, just like my mom did for me.

29 years old and I have almost made it through the 20s: but not without my share of college drop-out semesters, 3 different colleges, many waitressing jobs, 3 different boyfriends, 3 times moving home with mom, 5 different cities of residence, 16 different apartments, and a head-first jump into grad school. I am the archetypal twentysomething. I turned out ok.

Adulthooders, what about you? Do you agree with Henig’s assessment of the lazy twentysomething crowd? How have you/did you survive in your twenties? Any and all thoughts on this subject are welcomed in the comments!

-Mara “Those Darn Kids Are So Noisy” Stringfield

Photo via Flickr by Dpstyles.

Notes on Adulthood: August 23

Everyday we learn something. This is how we grow. Here is what I learned this week.

Notes on Adulthood: August 16

What did you learn this week? Share your notes in the comments!

Cheers,

Mara

{Picture I took at Stone Brewery of the 14th Anniversary Stone IPA and the Mikkeller Imperial Stout.}