In
1991, I was a slow boat back to the United States from the Persian Gulf. Having dispatched Saddam Hussein and his
army, the Allied forces were going home and without much to show for it, so
were I and my unit. Still, what little
we did do, we were offered counseling on the transport back but being young, in
our early 20s, we had little use for a shrink.
So, I and many of my cohorts said no and went about our business. Steven Watkins, a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq
has figured out his own way of coping.
The
trained engineer has seen some harrowing things while serving in Afghanistan
and working in Iraq. I’ve done nothing
compared to this man. However, Mr.
Watkins was a man in search of a mission and a purpose. He signed up for everything he could and
though not actually needed, he would join patrols and the like. He saw the worse of war and then sought
more. When he left the military, he
signed up as a civilian engineer in Iraq.
In short, Mr. Watkins was trying to scratch an itch and burned himself
out and was injured in the process. Upon
returning home, he attended counseling and group therapy but in his words, it
had little effect.
Then,
he had an epiphany. Challenges are what
drove him and made him the happiest prior to his injuries. Challenges could also be his salvation. He contacted the son of the man who began the
famed Iditarod race between Fairbanks and Nome, Alaska to be trained for the
challenge. He is currently in the
beginning stages of his first Iditarod and is seeking to finish. Upon completion of that race, he will fly to
Nepal and a week later, climb Mount Everest.
He is healthier than he has been since returning from Iraq. He is emboldened with a spirit to push
himself physically and mentally.
In
a video published by The Washington Post,
Mr. Watkins said he felt that treatment for soldiers are too soft and not
challenging enough. Given that we are
talking about men and women who chose as their profession a challenging and arduous
path, having them sit and share their feelings is a limited but not useless
strategy. I can appreciate, in a
Nietzschean way, the concept of pushing recovering soldiers to tap into what
drove them into the military initially.
However, Mr. Watkins is flirting with a fine line.
Mr.
Watkins will finish a difficult race and climb a previously-thought
insurmountable peak. Yet, what happens
when these challenges are not enough? Soon,
he will traverse the gap between doing something for the purpose of self-growth
and actualization to doing something just because it is dangerous and
potentially, suicidal. For him, the
challenges are a verification of life. I
can understand this. What I did in the
military put me in such a rarefied air of existence, my life since has been,
while good and rewarding, not “challenging.”
It is hard to feel as alive as moments when your life is in danger and
therein lays the difficulty for Mr. Watkins.
I
do not profess to know an answer on how to treat veterans suffering the effects
of war. I do not think that counseling
should be ruled out but it is not enough.
There must be something more, something harder, something more
challenging. I wish Mr. Watkins luck in
his endeavors to complete the Iditarod and to climb Mount Everest. However, at some point it will not be enough
and I hope he is able to find a more permanent answer. If he cannot, I fear he will only finish what
someone started in Iraq.
