I was running late. Even though I had lain out my light-grey suit the night before, went to bed early, and gotten a head start to beat any Saturday morning traffic, I still ended up somehow behind the quickly slipping hour. I felt this way fairly often, for many reasons, but this time I was late for something that actually mattered to me – my friend was celebrating a lifetime achievement. He was to be commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant by the United States Air Force.

After slogging my way through the lines of cars to LAX and squandering several valuable minutes searching floor after floor of main campus offices, I realized that the location of the ceremony had been changed at the last moment and that I was out of the loop on the update. I begrudgingly ran back to my car, pulled out of the structure, and careened my way around the corners of the Loyala Marymount University campus to find that the ceremony had already begun on an outstretched plot of grass beside an already full chapel parking lot.

Well enough, I risked a parking ticket in a distant lot and ran my way over, discreetly found a seat at the back, and witnessed as he crossed the front of an onlooking crowd as he swore his oath that was delivered by his wife (also an officer). The crowd politely cheered as his family members pinned brass bars onto his lapels and he acknowledged his new duties that would follow.

As the ceremony ended, the handful of newly appointed officers made their way to the edge of the chapel that overlooked Los Angeles, its white walls shining brightly in the summer sunlight. Friends and family made their way over to congratulate them all on their achievement, took celebratory photos, and basked in the moment that they had all worked toward. A real Kodak moment.

Yet while I felt joy and pride in watching him be finally recognized for his years of toil, I had a feeling that I struggled to snuff out – a sense of envy or perhaps, more appropriately, disgust toward myself. I did not want any of this to be about me, this was his achievement. However, I could not help but feel a returning sense of failure as I reflected on my professional shortcomings, abandoned goals, and rudderless direction in life. I am not where I am supposed to be.

The Lie

I had grown up watching old military films, cop shows, and hearing stories from my father and his friends about their pride from serving the country in one form or another. As a result, I had always seen myself following a similar path. It took some convincing by my father to put off enlisting in the military right out of high school. So I had stuck through college with the thought in mind that once I had graduated, I could finally pursue a career in the USMC. Something about the camaraderie, the attention to detail, and the smart uniform of dress blues drew me toward that path.

It was not long after graduating from college that I had begun to look into the prospects of enlisting. I realized that as I had a Bachelor Degree, I was eligible to petition for officer candidacy. That meant I would have access to better pay, better benefits, more important responsibilities, a leadership role, and a long list of other perks that swayed me into actually following through with my plans. I scheduled a meeting with a recruiter, met with him and filled out an application, and began the process to get me on the fast-track. I got my managers, mentors, and family friends to send in recommendation letters, I got my doctors on board and had them forward my medical records, and I was even waking up at 5 A.M. to meet and condition with the other candidates that were also applying. I was telling everyone that I would be a US Marine.

However, after weeks of preparation and practice, the other shoe dropped. I began to doubt myself. The physical training was tough, but that was expected. The hours of running while carrying ammo cans for miles, the many many push-ups, sit-ups, burpees, and pull-ups were hard, but still bearable. I was the smallest guy in the group and struggled to keep up. Albeit, I was probably the most unseasoned of them, but I was not the slowest neither. Yet at some point, something in me just snapped. I did not want to do it any more. I did not have a problem with signing my life away, living in a desolate foreign country, nor being yelled at incessantly. But something in me grew fearful and aware that I was running toward a goal where I did not really see an end.

It was at the end of one of the morning PT sessions that I was sitting in the cab of my truck and stared at the steering wheel for a good half-hour. My then-girlfriend had already left to study abroad for half a year, but I gave her a call anyway. It is an 8 hour difference between Los Angeles and England, but she was still nice enough to listen to me spew out my regret.

I am unsure of what overtook my judgement, but during the last set of push-ups that morning, I had stood up and walked over to the Captain as he watched on. I looked him in the eyes, then at his feet, and said, “Captain — , I do not think that I want to do this any more. I made a mistake. I am sorry for wasting your time and everyone in your teams’ time as well.” It was then that I felt a hand grab me around elbow and push me back to the squad that I was assigned to PT with. They all stared at me with disgust and confusion. “What the f*** are you doing?” one of them asked. “Get your head out of your a** and just finish the set so we can go home!” another one hissed. I shook my head, stood up, and left. I did not look back. I quit.

As I told this account to my girlfriend over the phone, I felt a catch in my throat and realized that I had become a quitter, I failed myself, and brought shame into my life. While she was not altogether very thrilled when I had first told her that I was going to sign up, she still showed me some support. “It’s okay. You can try again when you’re feeling up to it,” she said. “No, I can’t,” I said. “I can never go back. Not after that.”

The sense of morality in me prevented me from ever seeing myself in that role again. I hold the USMC in such high regard, that I can never even entertain the idea of placing my name on another application for them. The lie that I had told myself placed me in a situation where I put all of my goals into involving a 20 year commitment to a cause that I only chose to perceive the benefits of, nothing else. I was not truly dedicated to the cause and washed out after only a few weeks of starting. I still feel shame to this day and as a result of having that career as my only goal, I am now lost and unsure of the future.

The Truth

Discomfort and struggle are not, in themselves, a requirement to develop as a person. Rather, they are a byproduct of expanding your horizons and a perception of change that results in that development. The richness of the human experience, after all, stems directly from the seeking of new opportunities. And to say that there were more paths taken and blazed, than left untouched, should be the goal of anyone seeking positive change in his or her life. So why do I not feel good about my attempt?

I wake up almost every morning and see myself in the mirror and ask, “What am I still doing here?” I force a smile and say some affirming things to my reflection, then get ready for the workday. I stare at the wall of my blank, un-decorated cubicle and try to formulate some sort of plan, any plan, that will get me back on a track with something to work toward. The difficult part is finding something that inspired as much pride as when I still thought I would become a Marine.

My internal voice has become much quieter than it once was, I no longer feel as much interest in the movies that I had grown up on, and I feel discomfort whenever anyone talks about joining any military service branch. Most noticeably, after the past several years since this all transpired, I lack the confidence to see myself in any truly significant role. A selfish perspective if I have ever heard one.

The Lesson

As long as I have known my friend, he has been one of the most dedicated and tenacious people around. When I first met him (this is probably to his embarrassment), I considered him to be slovenly, lazy, and bitter. Keep in mind, this was at that point in life where I was doing well in school, felt financially stable, and had a clear sense of direction in life. So my judgement of him was far from unbiased. But what I did not know is that he had been taking steps to improve his life.

He was working full time at the job I am now at (I actually sit in his former cubicle), taking night classes, and volunteering with kids in the Civil Air Patrol. As time passed, I had the privilege of watching him transform physically and mentally. He shed the pounds that kept him weighed down in life, became more organized, more cleanly in appearance and lifestyle, and he spoke more words of motivation than criticism. Within a year, he was a totally different man. I don’t remember what he told me exactly, but at the time when I asked him what had sparked this change in him he told me that he was just ready to do something about it.

At the time when I was still trying for the Corps, he did what he could to get me out and running. He would go to the park with me and run laps beside me, gave me words of wisdom, and told me to keep working toward the goals that I really wanted. So when I told him that I was no longer trying for it any more, I could see a small amount of disappointment in his look. Yet, he never said anything to diminish my sense of self.

It has been three years since that day. And after constantly going back and forth on the decision of applying for the police academy, I brought it up to my friends that I was thinking of going for it. I got a few “that’s awesome, man” responses from some of them, but a large majority of the people I told said, “I actually cannot ever see you in that role” or “I think that’s a bad idea”. Those comments are the ones that stuck. I am still unsure if it is the right path for me or if it is just another USMC failure waiting to happen, so I have put off the application process for now.

Yet, when I told my friend about this, he replied with “Now that’s what I’m talking about. I don’t know why you haven’t joined some type of service organization. It seems that you have a great enough interest.” To which I replied with, “I’m concerned that I don’t have a good enough level of self confidence to achieve my goals in that regard.”

I then admitted to him aside from everyone else that he was the only one that directly remarked that it seemed like a good fit. He just replied with, “You can do anything you want, brother. You have all the qualities that make for a good leader, wherever you choose to be one.” That hit home.

It is easy to get down on yourself and forget what your purpose for even trying really is. It is easy to be blinded by prospects of money, glory, and pride. But at some point, you will need to sit down and ask yourself, ‘Why do I get up in the morning? ‘ That is the meaning of Ikigai, the namesake of this blog. What drives you to bother at all? Is it for your family? Yourself? Do you do what you do only out of necessity or because you want to? Who are you choosing to be?

It is good to set lofty goals for yourself; it creates a sense of direction and a recognition that you have a direction to go. The more goals that you have, the more paths are available to you. Try and fail, not try to fail. You are going to struggle and you are going to find a lot of things that are not for you as you go along. The Bureau of Labor found that the average worker will change jobs between 10 – 15 times during his or her lifetime. Especially among my generation, upgrading your career is a process. It is rare for someone to go into the workforce and settle on the first job that crosses his or her path.

Dear reader, it is important to remember that the success of working toward something is dependent, not only on your commitment to the end goal, but also the reasoning behind it. It is easy enough to seek out new opportunities when you are in a situation that makes you unhappy, but you need to be careful to run toward new chances and are not running away from something else. Even in lateral movements, something in that process must result in a positive change.

We live in a world with so many, countless opportunities, both employment and otherwise, that it can be considered impractical to settle on just one choice. There are a very limited number of things that you can actually control and inspiring change in your life in terms of personal growth is one of them. I know people that started out selling candy bars in high school to producing music labels, non-college graduates that are earning a fairly healthy amount of money by being tenacious and hungry for knowledge, and a girl that quit her job and spent a year traveling the world in the search for happiness. The thing that ties all of these stories together is the idea that none of them have the perception that their future is determined yet. They chose to grow and develop into potential success stories. Nothing in life is definite, other than your knowledge of whether or not you tried to make your life and the lives of those around you better.

I still have not brought myself to fill out the application, but I repeatedly find myself browsing the police applications website and mulling over the different roles that I would like to fill in a way that I had not before. The future is unclear, the path is rocky and unpaved, and the only thing standing between I and living my life is myself. Onward.

Congratulations, Randy on your achievement. I am proud of you and all that you have achieved. To see someone succeed by the sheer will of self motivation, dedication, and discipline is nothing less than inspirational. Wherever your career and life may take you and yours, I want you to know that you have made a difference in my life and will remember you for the hero that you are to me.