It is our way

I just had a very annoying conversation with a fellow law student. He was in Air Force JAG over the summer, but he didn't go through with it, based in part on the advice of his family and friends. In some wise, I understand. Family and friends can have a powerful impact upon the enlistment decision. But then he began to justify himself, and I began to understand less. It's dangerous, he said. We're not doing any good over there. This from a man justifying his vote for George Bush just a year earlier. You could just get blown up by a bomb. The military will break all its promises to you. As he talked further about it, I received the distinct impression that this person, as with other aspects of his life, was contemptuous of those who joined up: considered them ill-informed, misguided, or stupid. That's how this person sees the world: him and them, the smart and the dumb. Now he was on one side of the line, and there was the military on the other.

And if I thought it would do any good, I would have said: thank God more people do not think like you, because then the terrorists would be right about us, and the things we believe. Be free not to enlist, but do not look down upon the people that do. I hope you live a long life: but I wish I could convince you that simply breathing was not life. I hope that your selfishness brings you happiness; but do not believe that it is much other than selfishness. And our goals in martial arts practice and our understanding of the art must be very different. Otherwise I do not understand how you can continue to show yourself before the ghosts of our teachers, the great ones: who among Ueshiba, Kano, Shigenobu, Lichtenauer, Ringeck, Mair would have understood? They would have scorned your reasons, and you. And lastly, if you do not see the virtue of fighting a long and fading battle without hope of final victory, then how do you intend to be content with living?