In 2014 or 2015, Mike Pavasco was also in charge of resiliency training for the company we were in. He is a very upbeat guy. He asked me to be one of the presenters for the training. I turned him down. I had no other choice at the time, I did not believe the training would do any good.
I left the Army the following year in 2016. When I met up with Mike at the party, it occurred to me I could not only be one of the resiliency training sergeants now, I really have come to believe in the program.
It's almost crazy to think how far I have come in changing my view of meditation, yoga and balance in life. In 2014 I had just finished an Ironman Triathlon and was an advocate for an out-of-balance life focused on athletic goals.
While I was training for the Ironman, when I had an injury and a physical therapist said, "Listen to your body" I would think, 'My body is a whiny little bitch. I'm not listening.'
Now when a PT says "Listen to your body" I listen to her and do (or not) what my body says.
The pandemic interrupted my yoga practice, when I returned last month I injured my knee--the one that is still me, not metal. But I have meditated every day for more than three years--even days of injury and surgery and recovery.
Resiliency also involves spiritual practice. The path to peace for most of us is spiritual, even for those who have no religious practice.
Along with adding meditation and yoga to my life, I had a huge spiritual upheaval in my life that led to peace. The winner of the 2016 Presidential election turned my spiritual world upside down. Christians across America first supported and then worshipped a man who bragged about breaking commandments, who is the inverse of the Beatitudes. Conservative Catholics and Evangelicals decided a vain liar was their man. They even made up stories about how he was a modern-day King Cyrus.
Every white supremacist, militia member and Nazi wannabe in America celebrated. Steve Bannon--the head of the white nationalist website Breitbart--got an office in the White House. The following summer I visited Auschwitz and Yad Vashem and came home to Nazis marching in Charlottesville chanting "Jews will not replace us."
I joined a synagogue a few months later. During World War II, 400 million self-described Christians lived between the Pyrenees and Ural mountains. About one in a thousand helped Jews, 999 of a thousand looked the other way or joined in the looting, dispossession and murder of the Holocaust. Nazis were now "fine people" in America.
I thought things would get much worse than they have. But whatever happens, I have peace knowing the Synagogue is the place I should be.
Resiliency training makes sense to me now. It touches every dimension of life and can really help in a difficult world.
