SP I have read that going to war changes people as you would expect. In what ways did it change you ?
Well I was fortunate in that my rank, position, and the nature of some of my duties didn't require me to kick in peoples' front doors and take AK-47 blasts in the face, unlike many of my brothers- and sisters-in-arms.
What it did at the intellectual level is neither here-nor-there. Suffice it to say I pay a LOT more attention to what my government does.
At the emotional-psychological level, after the few years' wandering -- I was re-reading my journal from the first year I was home and it was like reading a stranger's autobiography (Really? I did that? Someone offered me that job? No recollection at all.) -- I actually was *better* than I'd been before.
I take far fewer things seriously -- not in the jokester sense, that was always part of my mojo, but in the the-sky-is-falling sense.
I'm far -- FAR -- more open to other peoples' POVs.
I'm far -- FAR -- less judgmental (except of certain buffoons in the public sphere who shall here remain nameless, though you can call them Rush, Sean, and Sarah if you'd like).
I think I became a much, much better mentor to those I...what is the verb anyway? ment?
With respect to my marriage, I think -- again, after the years of wandering -- it made me (in a negative sense) far more tolerant of the emotional ambiguity in which we persisted. "Ah, well, it is what it is." So that's a net negative.
On the whole, though, it made me damned grateful to be alive. I got lucky, really lucky. My best efforts to the contrary notwithstanding, I didn't get shot, blown up, winged, clipped, zapped. I didn't take one, a bit of shrapnel, or get hit. I lost some people, and that sucked, and it taught me I can't go through the next 30.9 actuarial years I have left traveling in this earthly vale getting spun up about things.
