On Growing Up and Being Wrong

Three weeks ago I wrote an article about joining the Navy on the anniversary of the Boston marathon bombings, the event that had originally inspired me to be a Naval intelligence officer. I did, in fact, swear in and still encourage undergraduates to consider the military. However, I will not be joining the Navy this summer.

I’d thought about military service for years, so applying always felt like a legitimate option. But after running the marathon last year and watching the first responders, I was struck with an urge—not an urge to do something per se, but to be somebody else.

The process of applying to be an officer took a year; the Navy is no longer in the business of shanghaiing bar hounds. It was a lengthy process entailing exams, x-rays, drug tests, clearance forms, accounting for every job I had taken and every location I had visited, and, occasionally, arriving at the recruiting station at 4:30 am.

The night my recruiter called to inform me I was selected to be a Naval Intelligence officer, I was just sitting down to hear Beethoven’s Eroica. I sat silently, marveling at how I could remain unmoved by this Romantic ode to battle-wrought glory.

Applying had been easy. The hard part was saying yes. After three months, my desk was stained with coffee and littered with lists of pros and cons. I dropped 10 pounds, and I still did not know.

Like most young adults, I responded to this vocational crisis with an existential one. I’ll spare underclassmen some future legwork. The existentialists believed that humans exist before we have a purpose, so we must create one. Humans are unlike a stapler, for example, where the need to staple is a purpose that precedes the existence of the stapler. For us, every action defines our “purpose.” This is as true in theater as it is in life—action reveals character.

So I swore in. It was remarkably unromantic. As I found out, there’s no actual “dotted line” to sign on, only the usual, endless paperwork. “The Navy’s greatest war,” my recruiter informed me, “is the one on trees.”

The morning after I swore in, I received an email offering me what I’d long considered my dream job while sitting in lecture (appropriately about “Paradise Lost”). I felt like tearing out my eyes, rending my clothing, drinking poison, or any number of literary reactions to a tragic turn of events. Not because the message had come ten hours too late, but because I’d sworn the oath to begin with.

In the “Iliad,” Achilles is famously presented with the choice between a short but glorious life in battle and a long but obscure life at home. Achilles chooses glory. Epics aren’t written about people who don’t choose glory. When Odysseus visits him in the afterlife, he recants: “I’d rather slave on earth for another man than rule down here over all the breathless dead.” But his respect for battle-won glory is undiminished; he welcomes the news that his son is a great warrior. I’ve often thought about which life I’d choose. My answer changes by the hour. All I know is that Achilles may have made a mistake, but it was his mistake. Choosing glory is what makes Achilles, Achilles. So long as the choice is honest, he chooses right.

Shouldn’t someone far above my pay grade be making these decisions? I’m inexperienced and I simply don’t know what is best in life. So I used the standards of others—chiefly those of the people I admire. I applied for the best of reasons, but they weren’t my reasons.

It’s easier to trust that your mentors have this whole life thing sorted out than it is to go out, make mistakes, and learn standards of your own. But all of us, even the wisest, most senior mentors, are just tall children in grownup clothing pretending we know what’s right. In the face of uncertainty, you must discover for yourself what is good. Your mentors won’t always be there.

If actions reveal character, if we choose our purpose in life, then turning down the Navy speaks poorly of my character. I took an oath. Those words have a hold on me. But to continue on would not be an action of my own. I say this not to disown my actions, but rather to take responsibility for having deceived myself and others. Ultimately, I’d rather admit my mistakes than perpetuate a lie.

I apologized to one of the board members who selected me to be an officer. He wrote back: “The mistake you are making is not believing in yourself.”

He was right. The character I tried to play was not believable. The actions didn’t match the motives. I take some life advice from Mel Brooks: “Life is a play. We’re unrehearsed.”

Sarah R. Siskind ’14 is a government concentrator in Adams House.