The Hammock Papers: Grateful.

11 November 2020

Grateful.

A Veterans Day message from Jocko Willink ...

I am no longer envious of the awards I see on the chests of our military men and women. I am older now. I have been to war. I know that each little dangling piece of metal was paid for at great cost in blood and sacrifice. I know that many of those awards came in combination with fallen comrades. I know that for almost every decoration that adorns the chest of a service member, there are also mental and physical scars that will forever ache.

And yet America’s veterans hold their heads high. They fight on through the pain of loss and find new missions and continue to serve in our military or in the civilian sector. Older generations of veterans protected and then built our great nation. This current generation of veterans is doing the same.

The young boy I was didn’t understand war. How could I?

I’m a little older now. I see a little more. I know a little more. And I know that veterans sacrifice immensely.

I know that our nation’s servicemen and women put duty to country above themselves.

I know that they serve not for medals or glory – but for a cause greater than themselves: Freedom.

I know that when our nation called, they answered.

Generations of veterans have stepped up and held the line against evil in the world.

And to that, I am eternally grateful.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL