Just another day in the desert?

I have been suprised at the changes that present themselves to me daily! I hear the same exclamation reiterated daily in different words from the Marines around me: "My life is on hold here in the Iraq desert."

While it is true that we have limited access to our families and loved ones and our 'lives' back in America, I have been shown that the potential for growth and for getting to know oneself has been increased exponentially. People pay good money to get this type of isolation from their daily lives.

Everyone of us looks at the same reality: WE ARE IN IRAQ. However we all draw different conclusions from the same data! Isn't that always the case? I work to get my Marines to see all that can be accomplished out here, I have completed online college classes and taken advantage of many other training opportunities. I have made new friends and renewed old friendships. I worked online to get support in the form of care packages and letters for my Marines to lift thier spirits from different sources.

The desert is lush if one looks with hungry eyes; hungry eyes that want growth; that require it. A thirsty soul that is only slaked with knowledge and wisdom. Many are content to fill themselves spiritually, mentally and emotionally the same way they fill themselves physically; with ambivalence, as if what one puts into one's body doesn't matter, perhaps thinking that some miracle occurs after eating fast food and it somehow becomes building blocks for a healthy body and a healthy life. The reality of course being that improper 'filling' creates deficiencies and drains the body's emergency stockpiles.

I look outside and inside here and I see an Oasis. Daily I find in myself the parched wanderer dragging myself to the Oasis again and again to fill myself with lifegiving substance. Ragged and weary, but determined. I look around at all the others that are pretending to be filled, but they look as ragged and weary as I, but they ignore the Oasis content to crunch on stale fears and insecurities and drink the tepid water of boredom.