Something bigger than yourself🤝

The year was 1965, and a couple of seconds had just passed since American’s pilot, James Stockdale’s plane was shot down.

As James found himself spiraling down in the middle of enemy territory, he started contemplating on the terrors that awaited him below.

Imprisonment?

Torture?

Death?

All three?

Most likely.

The only thing that was certain was that, whatever awaited him wasn’t good and he was in no rush on getting there.

It’s impossible not to ponder on what may happen to us in this situations. When the time comes, we all care about ourselves, nothing more.

But the second Stockdale hit the ground, that contemplation stopped.

He wouldn’t dare to think about himself. He had a mission.

Before finding himself in the midst of this war, Stockdale was part of the Korean War a decade earlier.

In the horrible and freezing prison camps of that war, Stockdale saw what the overwhelmed survival insticts are capable of doing.

Seeing his men fight against each other to see who would last longer, was one of the most horrific images he’dever seen and he wasn’t planning on allowing history to repeat itself.

Knowing he was the highest ranking Navy POW the Vietnamese had ever caught, he knew he couldn’t do anything regarding his fate. But, he also knew that, as commanding officer, he had a job and that was taking care of his men.

Stockdale didn’t take his obligation lightly, he went as far as trying to kill himself in order to send a message to his captors: 

I’m not a tool for you to use to hurt others.

He gave moral support to his men, specially those who broke under the pressure of torture, knowing that just like him, they were humans.

As time went by and torture became a daily activity, he gave his men some words that would help them survive, to keep fighting, a watchword if you will:

U.S. - Unity over Self.

As part of the group of men Stockdale cared for, was future US senator John McCain, who the Vietnamese tried to punish and stain his prestigeous military legacy by allowing him to leave, which he denied and chose to stay and be tortured by choice.

These two mean were not zealots for the cause, as both of them had their doubts on the legitimacy of the war, but they cared for their men and found a deeper purpose in it.

Sharing a commong purpose, a purpose bigger than ourselves, provides us with strength.

Stop making things harder on yourself by thinking about I.

Stop thiking about yourself in every situation. The world doesn’t care about you.

You’ve inflated your own importance in this world.

Thing don’t happen to you. They just happen.

This myopia denies us from what really happens. This view has led us to believe we’re at the center of the universe, to our own detriment.

But reailty is that there’s a whole world outside ours, a world filled with people who have dealt with worse, and will continue to do so.

So let’s not pretend any longer that whatever’s happening to us is special or unique.

This is no unique misfortune, It’s just what it is.

Let’s search for a deeper purpose, something bigger than ourselves.

Something that purpose would work as a lighthouse whenever we get lost, knowing that whatever adversity might come our way, we’ll still find strength in our mission.

Because the only way to find strength when there isn’t any left, is knowing there’s others we could help, others that could benefit from what we’re going through.

So if not for us, let’s do it for our loved ones….