Sing in me, Muse, and through me acquaint the story
of that man able in all means of alienated …
-Homer, The Odyssey
A dark poet’s adventure of Odysseus, the boss hero, is a adventure for the ages. It is a account of a warrior who overcame abundant gods, allegorical battles, mega monsters, and himself to acquisition his way aback home to his admired Ithaca.
Returning to my Ithaca, I encountered so abounding venues to sing this song. There were workshops, talks, ball events, long-distance runs, parades, accumulation therapy, bar sessions, and Greek choruses to advice ability and abstract the story.
My aggressive account was administrator gold — the harsher, the bigger — as abounding acclaimed adept writers had proven. Afterwards all, my training had able me to go into action and face bottomward death.
But the adventure of Odysseus is the adventure of the day afterwards — what happens aback the action is done?
Nothing had able me to live.
Sitting at the appropriate alteration conference at my aftermost aggressive assignment station, I watched a antic noncombatant abrupt a allowance abounding of soldiers about our Veterans Affairs bloom and educational benefits.
I benumbed in and out until he said, “Not anybody thinks your account is a acceptable thing.”
My apperception slowed down.
Before my eyes flashed all the account accessories I had apprehend about veterans abrogation the account and landing amazing careers.
Weren’t headhunters recruiting Army inferior admiral like me? Wasn’t I actuality thanked every time I stepped alfresco the abject for my service?
He was abundantly misinformed. America admired its warriors.
Even if things were difficult for veterans, I was absolutely an exception. As an Army captain with command experience, with assorted degrees, and with action time, as far as I was concerned, I was a accursed unicorn.
Then I larboard the borders of the base, took off my uniform.
Months and months afterwards applying and applying and applying to hundreds of openings, I sat above from a animal assets adumbrative for a “military friendly” company. She had heard me allege at breadth about my account and deployments. She glanced at the resume I had accurately crafted for the job aperture of arch bassinet weaver. She calmly put bottomward my paperwork, looked me in the eye, and said:
“Yes … yes … ” as she coiled abroad my account with her hand, “but you accept no absolute experience, do you?”
In the antechamber sat addition administrator far added able than I, apprehension an interview. The day after, there would be more. It wasn’t the aftermost time I would appointment this.
My account wasn’t an accomplishment. It was a liability. It was aloof absent years of absolute application — as far as I could see.
I started to see my visits to “hero” job fairs — with recruiters who looked dubiously aloft my assorted degrees and action adventures — as a banking and brainy bloom accountability to me. They offered no possibilities above accepting a resume, afresh citation a “poor fit” for any positions. One offered me a minimum-wage aegis bouncer position, animate I badly bare the work.
Where were the above admiral from Forbes annual and the affiche accouchement of Fortune 500 aggressive websites? The absolute unicorns had fled the stables.
Odysseus, aback he alternate home to Ithaca, didn’t get a acceptable home parade. Homer describes a agitated action amid Odysseus’ wife’s suitors and the abiding hero.
Ultimately, like all acceptable war stories, the capital appearance wins the action and the adventure seems to end.
But the additional bisected is all I cared about. Odysseus had fought for years to get home. In his action with the suitors, he unleashes levels of abandon unprecedented, blind alike his own maids for their perceived treachery. His battlefield is not in the past. He sees it everywhere.
It seems the absolute assignment of The Odyssey was an amaranthine journey: How now was he activity to live?
I was searching. I was analytic for acceptable examples of veterans who had larboard and hadn’t dead themselves or absorbed themselves on drugs or absent their best selves in blocked employment.
I was attractive for an employer who wouldn’t amusement me as the band-aid to years of budgetary monsters. The cadre corruption gods accepted me to bear a solution, like all allegorical heroes, like those “skilled in the means of contending” do.
C.P. Cavafy writes in the composition “Ithaca”:
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon — don’t be abashed of them:
you’ll never acquisition things like that on your way
as continued as you accumulate your thoughts aloft high. …
… Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon — you won’t appointment them
unless you accompany them forth central your soul,
unless your body sets them up in advanced of you.
Have I anytime apparent Ithaca for what it was?
I had become so captivated up in my application that I couldn’t see about me.
My accouchement were growing like grass while I kept watch over at the abroad sandstorms of Iraq, as if I were still active there and adulatory at times I was.
I wrote “When Will I Learn” to abduction that moment.
When will I apprentice to apathetic down
the becloud of thoughts, down
the complete of gunfire, down
the beating eyes aback you bright a room,
Rifles down
while the helicopter pilot aerial swears
I saw a activate man
when will I apprentice to apathetic down
the adumbration of the Stryker aerial on overpasses down
to my aboriginal analysis in fair Connecticut
start at the alpha down
describe your occupation
medals down
drowning amid the marsh grass of the Tigris
and the admirable Hudson …
So I put abroad my account in a box and formed through Veterans Day. I watched resumes appear above my board that dripped in aggressive acronyms, ones I knew would never see the ablaze of day. I apprehend addition beautifully crafted certificate area the adept had bargain his absolute aggressive administrator account into a distinct line.
But the added I abandoned who I was, the added I was reminded by my coworkers and others.
“This is apparently block compared to Iraq, right?”
“I don’t anticipate I could accept done what you did.”
Finally, there was my sister, Sheeba Varkey, insisting I reconnect and accompany a autograph workshop, of all things.
So I abutting New York University’s veterans branch because it was the abutting one I could find. I discovered, afterwards afresh accepting my autograph sharp-shot by adept writers, that I had no accomplishment for abbreviate belief and almost any for essays.
But in balladry I apparent I could occasionally put adjustment to my thoughts. I wrote and wrote. I was appear and arrive above the ocean to Oxford.
There, I abounding the Oxford Brookes Veterans branch run by Niall Munro and the artist Susie Campbell, advertent the hero’s adventure doesn’t end with the return, but begins.
The branch helped me to address “The Desert Life.”
“The Desert Life”
after Tracy K. Smith
When bodies allocution about war
they allege as if it were a aberrant son
Who accepted bisected your abode and absent it in a bold of angle and bung and it takes
me to a tent, the years I lived on locusts in accessible to eat packets
baptizing and afire all the time
patrolling with shades
cast by ziggurats and gold argent towers
Straining
like a ancestor in the activity ward
to abstracted the complete of flags folding from the cries of joy’s embrace. So
I go
on alike while I remain
still,
a continued way away.
During academic introductions at a aggregation event, I apprehend the alarming catechism come, from a alpine man with alkali and pepper hair.
“Where did you assignment before?”
I took a animation and anecdotal and, as an afterthought, added, “I was additionally in the aggressive for a bit.”
His eyes lit up. I clenched, cat-and-mouse for the accepted academic questions about my acumen and the after accidental questions about how abounding bodies I had killed.
Instead, he said, “Follow me.”
I resisted saying, like all acceptable soldiers, “Lead the way.”
I absolved bottomward the alley into his office. On the wall, hanging, were the requisite degrees and ancestors photos.
In amid all of them was a blemish of blooming — a adolescent adaptation of him, continuing amid a accumulation of men from the Ranger Battalion. I angry to him, eyes widened. He laughed.
It wasn’t the alone time I would accommodated men and women like this. The veterans I had looked for in posters and magazines were all about me. They were accomplishing what I acquainted I was doing, animate and living, agilely and after a narrator’s articulation in their ears.
I anamnesis sitting for an account debriefing. The aggregation I formed for had advised assorted candidates, and some veterans and the HR administrator asked me, “So what do we attending for? What badge, what years of service, what locations?”
What was the aggregate that ensured the aggregation got a allegorical accumulated hero instead of agitated suitor-killing lunatic?
I didn’t accept an acknowledgment then.
But maybe, if I was asked again, I would apprehend to them curve from a composition by Amorak Huey, about a adolescent man who learns to shoot and dies overseas, and his acquaintance returns.
Maybe if they had the backbone to apprehend it, I would acquaint them the advocate never absolutely comes back. Rather, it’s his acquaintance who allotment to an America he doesn’t recognize. He adjusts, and studies to become a teacher, and attends baseball amateur again, accepting acclimated to ample crowds. I would go on to explain that he is affiliated now and has children, and that he refuses to ascertain himself by his service.
Maybe if they’re still absorbed at this point, I would acquaint them, like the apostle does aback asked about the war, about Odysseus and the Cyclops and his amazing escape through IED-laden anchorage to acknowledgment home.
Yes, he was beholden to be alive, and no, he doesn’t charge a artist to sing his song, or a cardboard to advertisement his works, or an employer to explain to him who he is anymore.
He assuredly agreed with what Huey wrote about all those who served and those who never did.
After all,
“We all appetite the aforementioned thing
from this world:
Call me nobody. Let me live.”
Editors Note: This commodity aboriginal appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit account alignment educating the accessible on aggressive service. Subscribe to their newsletter
© Copyright 2021 The War Horse. All rights reserved. This actual may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
How To Write A Resume For Security Guard Job – How To Write A Resume For Security Guard Job
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