

I was an Ambassador and Taken Hostage by Militants - DanielBMarkham
http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/09/i-was-an-ambass.php

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nate_meurer
Wow. You packed a whole lot of yourself into a very short post. Thanks for
this.

I love the paragraph that describes your reasons for running away, especially
this: "Serious trouble was good: it meant that people would start taking
options away from me and things would work out".

Beautiful. This is the proverbial cry for help, right? But the way you
describe it makes it seem like a perfectly logical, albeit destructive,
strategy for dealing with powerlessness. A lot of people do this "running
away" thing all the time-- many of us do it daily-- often without realizing
it. For the really unlucky ones, running away is built in to our reflexive
psyche, so it corrupts every attempt at resolving conflict.

But then, like you say, sometimes it's possible that you have no better
option. That's a hard one.

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ekanes
One of the lessons learned was that there was another option, he simply didn't
see it (ie. tell his commanding officer about his problems -- ask for help).

Running away was the best option he could _conceive_ of, not the right one.

Thanks for sharing your story Daniel.

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hughprime
Interesting story.

One thing I've always wondered about these war games (I realize it's somewhat
tangential to the actual point of the story, but...) -- how do you know when
you're "dead"? Some guy plays dead, then leaps up with a machine gun and
starts firing -- what exactly was he firing? And isn't "playing dead" an
especially unfair tactic when the "actual dead" are also playing dead?

~~~
run4yourlives
As he says below, MILES gear with a blank firing adapter. Basically laser tag
2.0.

Neat trick with MILES gear: If you run out of ammo you can slap the butt of
your rifle against something and still "shoot" people...the mid 90's version
at least worked on the recoil of the weapon.

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yan
Thank you for sharing that; I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

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run4yourlives
As a veteran myself - Infantry, Canada, I thank you for sharing this
perspective. I can appreciate how you felt (and still do no doubt) having
served myself.

All I can say is that you seem to have lived a fine life so far, but it was
you who was able to learn from your experiences, not your experiences
educating you.

How does it go? Semper Fi, bud.

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ghiotion
I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but I've been quietly following you on
the net for quite some time. You seem like one of the nicest people I've never
met. Can I buy you lunch sometime? :)

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YetAnotherAcct
Thanks for posting this, Daniel. I am going through something somewhat
similar, although my problem, as it were, is entirely in my head I think:

I absolutely despise my job, although I don't know why entirely... the best I
can come up with that would change the situation for me is if my company paid
engineers overtime. I am feeling somewhat guilty of "lacking a sense of
urgency", as I was told; I think my problem is not being able to care, or fake
caring, in situations where I am told to do something I consider stupid and/or
futile.

Like you, I started "running away" by declaring I will work only forty hours a
week, which has started the inexorable path towards my being fired.

However, I do not see what I can do to tell my superior about my problems or
fill out forms: any suggestions there?

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maxklein
Sorry to be the bad guy here again, but though the story is interesting as a
story, I don't get what was 'learned'. I did see a lot of the "a lot of bad
shit happened to me when I was younger" text in there. Whenever I see that
type of stuff, my whiner radar switches on.

It's unimportant what you overcame in the past. If this is important for you,
then you still have not learned. A muscleman will not win a competition
because he lifted a huge weight during training, he will win because he put
his effort into lifting the weight in front of him right now, and did not
think about all the weights he lifted in the past.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Upvoted.

Thanks for sharing what I feel -- and I wrote it. It's got a lot of "poor me"
in it.

The story would be very different if I told it from today's point of view. The
purpose was to tell it the way I was feeling it at the time.

There were a lot of things learned, but like any real story in life, it's
muddled. One of the things I learned, not mentioned, was that if you have a
problem that you can't solve -- it's your responsibility to communicate it.
And to keep communicating it until something is done about it.

But at the time it was very muddy, as I think you can tell. Can't help that --
that's the way it happened. Maybe there are other people in similar
circumstances that this would speak to that wouldn't get the point if told
differently. Also the story is more powerful by being told the way it is, in
my opinion, of course.

Great point about living in the past. I think maybe you misunderstood the
tone, however. I still feel very badly about the whole thing. It's not like I
think of this as some kind of great feat that I performed. It was a total
disaster. I was lucky to have skated through as well as I did.

I'm out of this conversation, as I'm way too biased to do a good job
commenting. Thanks for the thoughts.

~~~
frig
I don't know of another organization that, on balance, comes across as having
a deeper well of general competence and organizational smarts than the marines
(/not a marine).

How much of marine philosophy and organizational style makes it into your
consulting work?

I had a similar experience at one point, though in different circumstances and
a different organization. Hardscrabble, self-bootstrapped types tend to try
and solve everything on their own b/c that's just how they've done.

It's good to have that backbone but can be sabotaging if it's your only
strategy; the frame of mind it puts you in is intrinsically adversarial and
limiting -- how do I do X for Y despite Z? -- instead of collaborative -- Y
wants me to do X but there's Z...can Y and I figure something out?

People from more privileged backgrounds generally are more comfortable taking
the latter approach; the behavior can be learned, but once you do you realize
how much ground you needless lost, which is sobering.

Bravo for the excellent anecdote.

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donw
I have an idea of how hard it is to share something like this, because I've
been through something similar.

Thank you.

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rgrieselhuber
I rarely read anything longer than 5 sentences these days, but I couldn't stop
reading until I had finished. Thank you.

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Estragon
Good article, but the title was misleading and sensational.

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amackera
A very interesting read!

