A Navy Seal's PTSD RX: The Great Books
When, several years ago, I visited The Mission Continues, the St. Louis-based veterans organization founded in 2007 by former Navy Seal and Rhodes Scholar Eric Greitens to serve his fellow veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I suppose I expected to encounter the combination of courage and heartbreak that is characteristic of so many programs focused on disabled veterans. What I found was not what I expected: it was much better—and a long way from the sort of tragedy that unfolded in the trial of the accused killer of American Sniper Chris Kyle. I was introduced to, among many others, Tim, deployed with a field artillery unit in Iraq, and who had lost eight friends in a single car bomb attack. While working an overnight shift at the Post Office and receiving counseling from the V.A. for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, he approached Greitens in hopes of helping other veterans in similar straits.
The Mission Continues, through its signature fellowship program which pays recent veterans a modest stipend to pursue community service projects, had helped to get him on his feet, to say the least. Tim had gone on from his night shift job at the St. Louis Post Office to assisting veterans seeking to qualify for their benefits—and then went on to earn a master's degree in social work from St. Louis' Washington University, where he also started a student veterans group. That's the idea of The Mission Continues—which has grown since then to be a nationwide program: thinking of veterans not as victims but as a resource, whose impulse to serve can continue to be the basis for their post-military careers.
But much more was going on at The Mission Continues than a fellowship program—as well-conceived as that was. If I didn't expect to encounter good news about veterans, I certainly did not expect to encounter an organization in which there was casual discussion about Aeschylus and the Greek tradition of the citizen-soldier. Or the idea of heroism, as discussed by mythology scholar Edith Hamilton in her book “The Greek Way”, distributed by Greitens to visitors to help explain his broader vision and ambition: to change the nation's understanding of who veterans are and of how they can continue to serve after their discharge.
Now Greitens (about whom an excellent full-length profile has been written by the Washington Free Beacon's Bill McMorris) has captured some of the essence of that approach to guiding troubled veterans, in his new book, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life. It's based in a series of letters—not e-mails or text messages—which he wrote to his one-time fellow Navy Seal training team member Zach Walker. It's a moving and candid reflection on their service and shared experiences—from training (in which they were in the same SEAL class) to combat. But, like The Mission Continues itself, it surprises. Far from being some sort of anodyne self-help book, it's a collection of thoughtful reflections on overcoming fear—and its symptoms, including the terrifying flashbacks of PTSD—by drawing, in significant part, on what were once called the Great Books. As casually as Greitens discusses Iraq and Afghanistan, so, too, does he cite Aeschylus and Aristotle, Homer and Montaigne, and yes, Psalms and theologically-inspired essays (notably those of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel).
To be sure, Greitens does not shrink from using his own personal story of hard times overcome in seeking to reassure Zach Walker (“in a class of tough guys, Walker was one of the toughest”), who, after what appeared to be a healthy post-military life found himself getting out of his truck and dropping suddenly to the ground because “a sniper had an eye on his position, or so he thought. He moved not at all, except for the blink of his eyelids. Hours, later, as the sun began to set, he sprang to his feet and bolted into the house.” Greitens, for his part, complements such powerful descriptions with his own story of past divorce and depression.
But what distinguishes this most unusual book is the extent to which it draws on what it's not too much to call the wisdom of the ages. The hard life of the soldier, adjusting to peacetime, is not new, he reminds . “Listen to these words, (Aeschylus) put into the mouth of a Greek soldier just returned from ten years of war:
“Our beds right up against the enemy walls
Rain from the sky, dew from the ground soaking us perpetually,
Rotting our clothes, filling our hair with vermin.
I could tell you stories of winter so cold it killed the birds in the air.”
From the same types of sources, he finds words of reassurance—that, suffering , endurance and putting past bitterness aside, can lead to healing. Greitens quotes “a fellow veteran named Sophocles”, and his telling of the story of Philoctetes, a hero of the Trojan War. “Be certain that to you too it is owed to suffer this—and to make your life glorious after and through these labors.” And he maps the importance of mentors, at any stage of life, for those who would exhibit “resilience”. In this, he turns to Machiavelli and The Prince. “Achilles , and many other ancient princes, were given to Chiron the centaur to be raised, so that he would look after them with his discipline. To have as teacher a half-beast, half-man means nothing other than that a prince needs to know how to use both natures.” Finally, Greitens reflects on that which transcends “striving, overcoming, sweating, pushing through, bearing down”—as important as such virtues are. Here, Greitens turns to Abraham Joshua Heschel's reflections on Sabbath: “Six days a week we wrestle with the world, writing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in our soul.”
There is much more in Resilience—from Einstein, from Newton, from Shakespeare, from Emerson. One hopes greatly that these collected letters combined both guidance and solace for Zach Walker, to whom they were posted, though Resilience, to its credit, resists the temptation to tell us; those engaged in private struggles deserve privacy. What's more, neither this book, nor the efforts of The Mission Continues, guarantees happy endings (although a 2013 Washington University evaluation of The Mission Continues is strongly positive.) Ultimately, one can say, though, that Eric Greitens successfully reminds us of a larger lesson. As the texts to which he refers so seamlessly recede from academic curricula and become almost esoteric for too many Americans, Greitens makes clear their profound, ongoing relevance—not just to understanding our culture but in helping us to make sense of our lives. In incorporating them in his letters to his one-time SEAL training buddy, Greitens underscores how the impractical is actually practical—and how we turn away, at our own risk, from wisdom.
This piece originally appeared in Forbes
This piece originally appeared in Forbes