John Koenig made up a list of words to describe emotions that we all have but have no language to describe. It’s called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. One of those words, onism, describes the frustration of being stuck in one body that inhabits only one place at a time. Each one of us represents only one of the 8 billion consciousnesses on the planet. Even the most well traveled of us will only be in a minuscule percent of all the places it’s possible to be. We will know so few of the people we could possibly know. We will see so few of the things that ever happen. We will miss nearly everything.
Against the backdrop of so much exclusion, Koenig expands a bit on the deception it takes to actually belong to humankind:
We sketch monsters on the map because we find their presence comforting. They guard the edges of the abyss and force us to look away so we can live comfortably in the Known World; at least for a little while. But if someone were to ask you on your deathbed, what it was like to live here on Earth, perhaps the only honest answer would be, I don’t know. I passed through it once, but I’ve never really lived there.
When someone asks me what it was like to serve in Operation Iraqi Freedom, I slide rapidly into onism. What’s true of my experience with Iraq is true of all wars and all people that left home to serve in them and came back alive. I passed through it. But I never really lived there.
I was in Ramadi. The real war was in Ramadi. But only before and after I was there. The real war was there but only for certain units that got hit the hardest. The real war was really only for those within those units in the convoys that got ambushed the most. The real war was for the ones that didn’t make it out with all their bits and pieces; or at all. Wherever the real war was, it was somewhere else. I missed it. If you drop deep enough into onism, the only people that really went to war aren’t around to tell you about it. From time to time though, something reminds you that you may have done a bit more than pass through.
I read Phil Klay’s Redeployment years ago when I was still a reserve Naval Officer clocking weekends at SEAL Team 17. I burned through it in between phone conferences for my new corporate tech job in the parking lot. I appreciated the style but I was still in it to some degree. And I don’t think I was really ready for it. The stories sort of bounced off me. I read it again last week; seven years since I last put on a uniform; 13 years since I returned from my last deployment to Iraq. And it was different. For whatever reason, be it enough water under the bridge or the sentimentality that comes with age, it hit me squarely this time.
Redeployment is a work of fiction; a collection of short stories from the different walks of life one finds in 21st Century warfare. The people are not real and the specific incidents did not exactly happen. But of course the people are all real. And everything happened. War, like the rest of the world happens in memetic repetition to those that experience it. Even what we’re not there to see with our own eyes becomes part of us. We don’t need to imagine Koenig’s monsters in the white space. They’re gifted to us by training. By the after action reports we read. And by the funerals of those we lose…either during or after. You may have seen so little of it. But you saw it all.
Ramadi. Fallujah. Haditha. Hit. Al Asad. Al Qaim. I deployed there. I came home. For five years I served at a command where Al Anbar was the area our teams were sent to. That’s longer than the entirety of World War II. I saw every after action report for every mission and attack. I know the names of every teammate we lost. Yet somehow, I’ve never shaken the feeling that I didn’t do any more than just pass through the war. And I know I’m not alone. I think Phil Klay wrote the book to tell the world what it was like to serve in Iraq. But he also wrote it because someone had to make a record for us too. To remind us what we did. To convince us even that it was more than just passing through.
We came home to fractured intimacy between those we loved most. We fished drunken teammates out of somewhere on the trip back. We were the weird vets stuck in grad school with a bunch of kids that didn’t know anything. We eventually had to hear about the casualties from the news instead of official channels. And for some reason, that wrecked us. We lost friends to suicide. We talked to the chaplains that told us that only Christ’s hands were truly clean.
The purest truth revealed in Redeployment isn’t the tales of violence or suffering or loneliness or longing. It’s how those of us that served chose to present the experience of war when we came home. Moreover, that we presented it so differently to different people. The girl at the bar. Our parents. The hiring manager in a job interview. The teammate. The press. The voters. The professor we’re paying for with the GI bill. People see what they want in a war. And they see what they want in those that fight them. The manipulative instinct of vets is strong.
There are many ways the experience of war is presented. And we often tell the story that plays best. If we’re not careful, that becomes the truth. For me, I like to say that I was just passing through. It was a thing to have done. From the war…not of the war. Not a part of me. That’s one version of the story. Onism at its best. But there was really only one way that it actually was though. And Phil Klay, as much as anyone ever has, wrote it down. And I’m grateful for that. Because my story is useless. But our story is something. The Chaplain was right...God’s only promise is that we’ll never suffer alone.
Sean, great piece, thanks for sharing.
I find the concept of onism very easy to understand and appreciate. And at times lament that I just can't keep going until I have seen and experienced everything. That said, I feel very fortunate about all the places I have seen and all of the things that I have done. I'm pretty happy with the minuscule portion I can bear witness to by having experienced it vicariously or in the flesh. I think I'll just keep going until I can't go anymore, adding to the list as often as I can.
When I look up at the flight status board at an international airport, it really resonates that there are many places I haven't been. But I don't stress over it because there are many places I don't want to go to. I've often said to my friends and family that I have done and seen more things by the age of 30 than most people experience of a lifetime. I'm okay with just having passed through.
I think I'm a better person for having passed through much of the world. I have a wider and fuller understanding of how it all fits together. My closest friends often say I am not of my own culture. I have a certain disdain for Americans as I've been able to contextualize the American culture among many others in the world. It is still the best there is but we can do a lot better.
My story is useless and worthless unless I can convey it in a manner that enriches the lives of those that have not seen or done the places and things I have. I have been the beneficiary of those vicarious experiences and in willing to reciprocate as I can.
Thanks again for writing this piece.
Dave