When I left the military in 2016, I had no plan, no purpose, and I was at the start of my post-military identity crisis.
I felt completely lost.
Stripped of my rank, my job, and my sense of self, I clung to my memories with the fervor of my preschooler as she gripped my hand on her first day of school today.
I thought back to ROTC field training with a smile, as I remembered the friends I made and the camaraderie we had. I felt envious of my younger self for being at the start of what would become a thrilling journey.
A thrilling journey that pushed me beyond my limits, took me to places most people never see and pushed me to do things most people never do.
Special Memories in Special Operations
I thought back to all the hours I spent in the MC-130P.
Suddenly, I missed the sound of the engines starting up, the comforting click-clack of switches and buttons as I went through my checklists with easy muscle memory, and the incredible feeling of flight, as the wheels kissed off the ground.
I thought back to my time in Okinawa.
Three years spent in a foreign country exploring a new culture, flying in my first operational squadron and traveling to amazing destinations.
I thought back to my deployments to Afghanistan and Djibouti, and the close bonds forged among the aircrews. How every flight, every mission made a difference in some way. How I had felt part of something.
Something important.
Something big.
As vividly as I recalled the memories, the sense of loss was just as strong. I realized that all I had left were memories.
I felt guilty for not enjoying my time in the service more.
I felt angry at my active duty self for not taking more pictures, writing more journal entries, and collecting more mementos.
And I found myself looking back on my career with rose-colored glasses.
Rosy Retrospection
Turns out there’s a term for this.
It’s called: rosy retrospection.
It’s a well-studied psychological concept defined by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as “the tendency for people to remember and recollect events they experience more fondly and positively than they evaluated them to be at the time of their occurrence.”1
In other words, ROTC field training wasn’t as great as I remembered it.
Flying the MC-130P, being stationed in Okinawa, deploying. None of it was as good as I remembered it.
My brain glossed over the negative memories and fixated on the positive. For a new veteran feeling sentimental about their career, understanding this cognitive bias was an important realization.
Curious, I started digging deeper into some of my most cherished Air Force memories.
And what do you know?
Things weren’t as great as I initially thought.
Although I focused on the camaraderie from field training, my brain had blocked out the part where I was yelled at by the training staff, dripping in sweat in the Alabama summer heat, and started every morning with anxious anticipation of the day to come.
While flying was romanticized in my mind as a wistful experience into the wild blue, in actuality, flying was stressful. Responsible for the mission planning and fuel planning, I thought back to all the times I had a “helmet fire” or stressed about check-rides.
While Okinawa was an idyllic postcard destination, it was also an isolating and challenging experience for me personally, as I found myself thousands of miles from home in a country completely dissimilar from that which I was accustomed.
And those deployments?
The relationship I was in at the time was hanging on by a thread during my tour in Afghanistan. My crew and I were shot at multiple times during low level and airdrops. In Djibouti, our highly documented mission over South Sudan almost ended in catastrophe, shattering my trust in our deployed leadership.
By balancing these nostalgic feelings with the reality of the events, I was able to see my experiences more clearly.
Yes, I had amazing opportunities in the Air Force, and I wouldn’t trade my career for anything.
But, if I am honest about my time in the military, it wasn’t without hardship, adversity and stress. Viewing it from that perspective was valuable, as it became easier to see it as a chapter in a longer story.
Final Thoughts
Leaving the military can be a difficult transition.
Acclimating back into the civilian world can leave veterans feeling directionless and lonely. Grasping onto our prior lives by way of recalling positive memories or pursuing positions similar to our active-duty jobs can serve as coping mechanisms for the change.
However, multiple studies have shown that generally, the best is yet to come, as optimism and life satisfaction tend to increase with age for individuals in the United States.2
So, if you find yourself hanging onto your rosy memories, take a moment to remember your experiences in their entirety.
Try to remember “the suck.”
And realize that your next chapter has yet to be written.
Mitchell, Terence. R. and Thompson, Leigh. “A Theory of Temporal Adjustments of the Evaluation of Events: Rosy Prospection and Rosy Retrospection.” https://web.mit.edu/curhan/www/docs/Articles/biases/Book_Chapter_Theory_of_Temporal_Adjustments.pdf
Travers, Mark. PhD. “No, You Were Not Happier Way Back When. Here’s Why.” Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-instincts/202101/no-you-were-not-happier-way-back-when-heres-why
Image Credits:
https://www.sunsetvacations.com/post/8-reasons-the-beach-is-the-best-choice-for-your-vacation/
https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Photos/igphoto/2001246006/
https://www.businessinsider.com/29-awesome-images-of-marine-drill-instructors-screaming-in-peoples-faces-2013-2
https://www.jbsa.mil/News/News/Article/1601635/reveille-and-retreat-if-you-hear-it-heres-what-to-do/
Sam, you wrote a penetrating retrospective. I have to remind myself that times weren’t as great as I remember them. I’ve forgotten a lot of boredom or ignored times I felt under challenged or misused. Most importantly I check myself by thinking about the times I may not have been as good or talented as I remembered being. First rule of public relations is don’t believe your own BS. I’d like to think that humility was my best characteristic (that’s an attempt at sarcasm) but we want to be remembered for what we did. Rarely do we want to be content working in the background; especially aviators. Type A people want to be essential. We want to be noticed for our awesomeness and then missed to the point of disfunction when we’re gone. Truth is, the US military makes people as replaceable as possible so we can replace them quickly in combat. It should be that way. The unit continues to function without me, and that’s a good thing. Soon the unit may forget I was there like the sea washing away the footprints from a beach. The only person who remembers we were there was us, which is why I keep a little of that beach sand in my pocket. How we remember our service is a personal affair. It’s enough to say to the rest of the world that it mattered that I was there and I could be a part of something great even when the something we were doing was less than great.