A Little Introspection

So......I really never thought that I would be one of those people who instantly jump on others with the "Once a Marine, Always a Marine" or "There are no Former Marines" lines. While I do fiercely believe in these ideas in my own day to day, post-active duty life, I feel that people should be able to make there own call in how they feel about their prior service and not everyone took to their professions the way some of us did.

A few days ago however I did actually correct one of my peers at work. This is a man who will introduce himself amongst the other service members at my new job as a "former Army Ranger" and he is, true to form, a very proud one at that. He was speaking to another colleague and he referred to me as "a prior Machine Gunner". And.....as you all can imagine....it just caught me wrong......and I stopped him, and calmly informed him, you see what you have to understand about me is, that I will be a Marine Machine Gunner until I draw my last breath." His response was, "well look at what you're doing how." And I had to give him a lesson in personal philosophy.

The term Marine Machine Gunner is not a profession. It's a walk of life. It's this wonderful abrasive / aggressive personality that completely overtakes those of us who believe in what we do. The more I thought about it over the past few days, I've started referring to it as a sort of charismatic chaos. A perspective of being entirely mission oriented (whether that mission is disrupting an insurgency or going out to the bar with some friends) mixed with a confidence that no one on god's green earth can hold a candle to (How could it go wrong?.....it's us) and having the biggest most caring heart that very few people will ever know about because we keep it tucked under layer upon layer of scars. But just let one person attempt to do harm to those souls in our charge and we become a monster of mythic proportion.

These Ideas can never be a nine to five job. It's a definition, never a description.