"Where are you flying today?" the Delta Arlines agent asked.
"Kansas City to Atlanta, Atlanta to Paris, Paris to Dubai. Then I take a small regional airline to Kabul, Afghanistan."
"Sounds like the trip of a lifetime!"
I've made the trip of a lifetime several times. This will be my seventh trip to the wars in five years. One trip may be an outlandish mid-life crisis. Seven surely qualifies me for some type of clincal diagnosis.
I am certain that multiple trips to wars have changed me, but I am not sure what those changes are.
Every story, at least every narrative story people will actually pay attention to is about how a person changes. The 12 Steps of the Path of the Hero, also known as the monomyth, articulated by Joseph Campbell result in the hero changing. I am not a hero by any stretch, and luckily classical heroics are not required for the path, just the 12 steps, one of them being a change or transformation.
In the classic post-modern monomyth the transformation is Luke Skywalker becoming a Jedi or Neo becoming The One. My transformation, if any, has been decidedly less dramatic--at least from my point of view. Sure I've dodged a few bullets, but I just dove to the ground rather than doing the limbo in slow motion.
The path of the hero is also called the monomyth because the basic steps apply to every story ever told by humans--at least the compelling, entertaining stories people actually cared to remember. Without a few of the steps, the story falters and becomes much less enjoyable.
The 12 steps of the path of the hero, include:
1. Hero In Natural Environment
2. Call to adventure
3. Reluctance
4. Encouraged by wise man
5. Cross Threshold
6. Tests and Helpers
7. Cave
8. Supreme Ordeal
9. Sieze the Sword
10: Transformation
11. Road Home
12. Elixir
Whether the human brain's preference for these steps is instinct or conditioning is a matter of occasional conjecture, but the fact is that for mellenia every enduring story has had the same basic steps--even non-fiction stories like Michael Lewis' The Big Short, a story about hedge funds that made billions in the mortage meltdown, follow the steps.
Our brains like the path so much we will rearrange facts and the sequence of reality to make things fit the narrative. In the social sciences this pheonomena is called narrative bias. An offshoot of narrative bias occurs in the news media when stories are ignored or spiked because they do not fit the predispositions of the reporters and/or editors.
The brain's bias for a story architecture that fits a sequence of steps is a problem for explaining the why and how of my multiple trips to the wars. The reality doesn't fit the narrtive your brain prefers and does not culminate in a transformation--at least not one that I can discern. (I've thought about inventing one, if for no other reason than to make a book proposal that will likely catch the eye of a publisher.) Without a clear transformation and triumph the story of the last five years of my life is without a point.
It hasn't been pointless, but there is not a clear, concise point. There has not been a clearly defined purpose or adversity to overcome. There has been no final gunfight, yet.
My adventures in the wars, like the wars themselves, do not fit the nice neat narrative the brain prefers. There was no final battle in Iraq and there will not be one in Afghanistan. Iraq is slowly fading and Afghanistan--the good war, the war of necessity--has lasted longer than the attention span of the viewing public.
The wars drag on, I keep going to them.
On this trip I'm going to try something different. Normally I fill this space with the usual point of view reports news/analysis reports, photos and travel notes. I will still do that, but I will also throw in more memoir(ish) material, thoughts, observations and reflections on five years of living in two incompatible worlds.
It has been the living in two worlds that has had the most profound effect on me. It is not a day-in-day-out effect. The effect usually manifests when a person discovers the life I live, where I have been, what has happened to me, what I have done. It is then that I realize how I live in the real world--the world of AK-47s, car bombs, beheadings, suicide bombers, poverty, filth and disease. I do not live in the plastic world of grocery stores, strip malls and orderly vehicular traffic. I visit the plastic world for long periods of time but I do not feel comfortable in it. I like the plastic world much more than the real one. I like airconditioning, reliable electricity, potable drinking water and food that won't make me sick.
When a person who only knows the plastic world meets me, I realize that there is something wrong with me. I put a lot of effort into going to the wars--a concept that even many soldiers shake their heads at.
I am now in the process of leaving the plastic world for the real world. I type this in the international depatures terminal of Atlanta-Hartsfield International Airport. The nexus of the real world and the plastic world is in airports. Most people are traveling from plastic to plastic, but every so often they cross the path of those with the means to escape the real world or those who seek it out.
Time to board the plane to Paris, en route to Dubai.