Monday, November 01, 2004
Timed Event
A bit of wisdom that I picked up from a friend of mine, a few years back.
I was going through an Army school. The cadre were trying to up the pressure. Talking all the time how success in this course could make your career. (It wasn’t true) Several of my classmates, including this friend of mine, were getting incredibly stressed out by the course. Then one day, Chris, this friend of mine, came in and he wasn’t stressed out anymore. I asked him what was up.
He told me that this was a “timed event�. Pass or fail, on June 28th of 1994, that class would be over. He would be going back to his unit, and his family. What happened between now and then didn’t really matter. He wanted to do his best, but he wasn’t going to kill himself over anything because this was not a permanent situation.
People around me have, at times, been amazed at how calm I am about the stupid crap that has gone on around me here. It’s the same thing. I may not know an exact date, or even a decent approximate date, that I am getting out of here. But that doesn’t change the overall situation. There is no two minute warning, stopping the clock, or time outs.
This is just another “timed event�.
I was going through an Army school. The cadre were trying to up the pressure. Talking all the time how success in this course could make your career. (It wasn’t true) Several of my classmates, including this friend of mine, were getting incredibly stressed out by the course. Then one day, Chris, this friend of mine, came in and he wasn’t stressed out anymore. I asked him what was up.
He told me that this was a “timed event�. Pass or fail, on June 28th of 1994, that class would be over. He would be going back to his unit, and his family. What happened between now and then didn’t really matter. He wanted to do his best, but he wasn’t going to kill himself over anything because this was not a permanent situation.
People around me have, at times, been amazed at how calm I am about the stupid crap that has gone on around me here. It’s the same thing. I may not know an exact date, or even a decent approximate date, that I am getting out of here. But that doesn’t change the overall situation. There is no two minute warning, stopping the clock, or time outs.
This is just another “timed event�.
