Naive Once, Then Choice

A naive outlook on life can only be afforded to a man once; after that, it is a choice.

Aurelius Kadzius

I have been naive in friendships, love, business, work, and leadership. My lack of experience while moving from boyhood to manhood was painful, with many mistakes. 

I watched others fall into traps and decided I would avoided those; some I didn't see as traps, and I fell into the pit and had to get myself out. 

It's more complex than "Do the right thing." For who? Doing the right thing for me sometimes leaves others out; if they do not understand, young men will take offense, ha! Old men will take it as a personal insult. A lesson learned. 

In work and business, not everyone is on the same side (I thought we were, we were in the grunts), and sometimes it starts to sound like a pissing contest, and I am not here to see who has the longer, stronger stream. 

This went on in the grunts as to whose plan of action we would use as an SOP for taking sniper fire or IED explosion en route to wherever we were going. The final call would always determine which plan was the most effective and easy to replicate. Then it was settled, sometimes...

It didn't come to mind that business and civilian work would be the same pissing contests, just different battle spaces. That was naive on my part.

Things said like, "Because I said so." I understood why this was the end of the conversation as a grunt. In the civilian world, I wanted to head-butt the man's teeth in when I heard this, or it was implied. I am not a violent man. I keep it caged up for the normies.

In the grunts, the phrases "This is how we always did it" or "Because I said so" probably got more men killed than any other phrases I can think of now. It is a bit late, so I am not as sharp. Oh well, maybe this "This intel is good" That one too.

This was not that type of party; I was no longer a grunt, living with savages and questions of plans and executions of plans I thought would be more accepted. They are not. Learn to navigate the trenches in all the battle spaces we men enter. 

Seek Knowledge & Grow Strong.