The secret to awakening is in what goes wrong | Eckhart Tolle youtu.be/pe1j5CtMmKY?si=MQvu… via @YouTube

We had to beg our families to send us Vaseline to lube the MK19s. No translators, so I tried to learn Arabic at every stop. Most people only hear about the Saddam Hussein part, but we also ran recon for the infantry and cleared streets of IEDs every day. One of six Humvees made it back. It took a long time to forgive a whole lot of things. Sharing my platoon’s story took even longer. I’ll tell it whenever I want—your approval isn’t required. Only deep narcissists think a veteran needs permission to speak about what he lived through. From my standpoint, the people who hate us for it aren’t the good guys. They never were, no matter the title or the excuses they used.