I was the eight-year-old batboy for the Maine Central Institute baseball team when I walked headlong into the backswing of Myron Sobey’s on deck warm up. Having ventured too close to retrieve a bat from the previous hitter, I caught his lead weighted, double Louisville Slugger right in the chops. Myron was a typical Maine farm boy who had baled hay and milked cows since he could walk and his forearms showed it. The force of the blow knocked me out cold and all I remember is looking up at the shape of my father’s face silhouetted against the pale blue sky. He had been coaching on the third base line and, like everyone else at Manson Park that cool spring day, thought I was stone dead. After a trip to the Sebasticook Valley Hospital, it was clear that I would live and be able to keep all my teeth, along with a valuable lesson about watching where you walk with muscle bound farmer’s sons swinging baseball bats.
The fore described event sets a suitable metaphor for how I learned most of the important lessons in my life; right in the teeth. Of course, a subtler approach to adventure learning is preferred, but the most valuable of life lessons will generally come with a fair dose of blood, sweat and tears. Like all aspects of life, that which we work the hardest to achieve will prove to be the most valuable, or at least the most memorable. The learning model is somewhat academic, depending on one’s humility, intelligence and courage.
As retirees, there is a false belief that we should know everything because we are experienced, (I mean, we’re old). We’ve already discussed the point in previous posts that the “retirement environment” is unfamiliar territory to us. It truly is adventure learning despite the numerous seminars and retirement briefings we were subjected to in the last days of our service. Some newly separated veterans did not even have the benefit of a transition plan at all. We must, therefore, demonstrate the courage to “earn” our lessons as we move forward into the uncertainty of life after our service... I extend this assertion with all due sensitivity to our brothers and sisters who are likewise leaving professions or circumstances to new normals and share our journey.
A lesson earned is a lesson learned. During the first years of my retirement, I earned a lot of lessons through my traditional Myron Sobey methodology and some by less painful means. Learning to negotiate the new terrain was not easy and I made a lot of mistakes, from which valuable lessons were delivered unambiguously. In the first two years of my retirement, I wish someone had told me the following without qualification (just to think about as guidelines):
1. Remain focused on your family (they have waited for you a long time).
2. Early to bed, early to rise… (you know the rest).
3. Grieve the loss of your beloved profession, then let it go.
4. Do one thing (again) that you gave up when you joined the military.
5. Take a class on anything that interests you. Then take another one.
6. Don’t make any BIG decisions without truly, very careful deliberation (MDMP).
7. Practice moderation and fiscal conservatism.
8. Volunteer for an organization that inspires you.
9. Run for a local office (any office).
10. Earn a new qualification or certification.
You will see that they are family centric with a focus on moderation. Also, note the continued emphasis on personal development and health in all the domains of personal resilience. If I did any of the above in the first years of my return to civilian life, it was probably by accident. The rest I learned with a baseball bat in the mouth.
Have the courage to earn your lessons,
Peace and love, dear friends,
Your brother,
Jack
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