Stuff is a funny sort of word. It can be whatever you want it to be, but for the most part we use stuff to mean things, both the tangible and intangible. After being tossed a life lesson by the KG’s, packaged up in the form of the most complex and secretive person I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, I am beginning to understand stuff, the intangible stuff we are all said to be made of. We have seen movies and read books that illustrate this stuff that I am talking about. The heroes are always made of the ‘right’ stuff.
The best example of the right stuff I have run into low these many years came to me in the form a man somewhere in his 20’s. I don’t know his exact age, or really many details of his life at all. See he works on a need to know basis, not a nice to know, or a good to know. If he feels the need to let you know then he does, otherwise he pretty much keeps to himself the specifics of a life less charmed than most. Intrigue has plagued me since getting to know one of what I imagine to be the many facets of this person. I don’t ask him much, because he would have told me if he wanted me to know. Could I be glorifying his secrecy merely out of a need to fill in the blanks? Sure, I suppose I could be. Not like I haven’t before, but this person allows me portholes into his life that have allowed me to think otherwise. The only time I sense he is completely comfortable talking about himself is when he is discussing his time while in service to our great country. His recounts of the time he spent in the military and the emotions he experienced have such range that I can only imagine he must be tired of feeling. I know I would be.
To have the ‘right’ stuff it is said you must have courage, honor, discipline, honesty, bravery, and a host of other attributes that make heroes heroes. The military gives the vast amount of its enlisted an opportunity to test their stuff, allows them the chance to see if what they are made of is enough to get them through. I am jealous of that test. I want to know if my stuff is the right stuff, enough to get me through. In my world my stuff is strong and resilient. In a world where Oreo cookies are not at a premium, I have a varied diet, insects are never thought of as food nor game, and fighting for my life and the lives of my comrades is not even conceivable I stand in wonder to think if I even have the right to say I am strong or resilient.
“At that moment, when the world around him melted away, when he stood alone like a star in the heaven, he was overwhelmed by a feeling of despair, but he was more firmly himself than ever,” (excerpt Siddhartha by Herman Hesse) I imagine he has had this feeling, and my heart aches know it too. To feel so alone and utterly helpless to change your circumstances, but feel certain that through the worst of it you know who you are and what you are doing. To have that sense of self be so firmly soldered in place, that not even acts of war can take it away…
I must take care to not give up so much of what I know about myself in order to rediscover my stuff, as I may only find again what was already revealed to me through my life thus far. I must take care not to seek the approval of the people who have already validated their stuff, because the ‘right’ stuff is in the eye of the beholder. That beholder is me. I will probably never know if my stuff is good enough to get me through war, but as I journey through this life lesson, and spend my days unwrapping the gifts of knowledge given to me by someone who has validated their stuff, I will continue to hold out hope that one day I can have that undying sense of knowing that what I have is enough to validate for someone else I am worth knowing.
