Ranger School Recycle's Lesson in Non-Attachment

Spring 2000

I stood in formation in front of the Fourth Ranger Training Battalion Headquarters with around thirty other recycled Ranger candidates from my Ranger School class. Hours before, we'd watched the rest of our classmates board the buses that would carry them towards the Mountain Phase. 

The Ranger Instructors had went home for the night. The sergeant on duty took roll. Everyone was accounted for.

"You're here for three hours. I want you to police the grounds around the headquarters. The sidewalk is your perimeter. Are there any questions?"

Thirty plus sets of eyes scanned across across the headquarters. The perimeter was clear, but the task was not. What in the world were thirty of us going to clean up around the building for three hours? There was a bed of lava rocks around the building and a stretch of grass extending to the sidewalk. At the most, it would have taken one or two people an hour of cleaning maximum.

"Are there any questions?" the young sergeant asked in a harsher tone of voice.

"No, sergeant!" we replied, covering down on the grass looking for misplaced leaves.

In Ranger School, we'd taken each task seriously or paid the price for it. This task was treated with similar focus, but with the addition of some well-needed calories gained over the couple of hours of leave we'd been given earlier in the day. We swarmed like locusts over the landscape: picking up sticks, cigarette butts and errant leaves.

We scoured a loop around the building in half an hour; then did a second loop for good measure. A few of us did a final loop. We got in formation and our unofficial leader headed into the battalion headquarters to ask the sergeant to inspect our work. Everyone in the group was optimistic that we'd be released early or at least given another task.

The sergeant on duty came out of the battalion headquarters. "So you think you're done?"

"Yes, sergeant," we responded.

"What's that?" he snapped, looking from the steps onto the lava rocks.

I bit the inside of my cheeks and strained to see what he'd found.

The sergeant bent over the rock and picked something up. He raised it over his head. I couldn't see anything "A grass seed, right there in the middle of the rocks that you were supposed to clean up. And another, and another. There's grass seeds all over this lawn - not just in the grass where they're supposed to be."

Is he kidding?

"I said that you'll clean this yard for three hours, but let me make myself clear - it could be longer. If I come back here and find grass seeds or dust in these rocks, then it will be longer. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sergeant!"

The duty sergeant went back into the headquarters and our dejected group went back to work. We stood arms' length from each other and cleaned the section of lava rocks in front of us. I knelt down on my hands and knees looking for each loose grass seed or leaf that looked like it was in danger of falling. I tore the leaves up into little bits and placed them with the seeds between stalks of grass on the lawn. Weedy looking seeds and other debris went in my pocket first and then into the garbage.

I pick some of the shiftier rocks up and then reset them so they lay firmer on the comrades. Any visible piece of black plastic was covered by at least two layers of well-placed rocks. The spring crept across the Georgian sky. My always spinning brain ran out of thoughts - good and bad. Depression, anxiety, and creativity punched their cards and called it a day. Bored into submission by the mindless task.

Eventually, the clock spun around three times. We study in formation. The duty sergeant strolled across the grounds. Not looking for anything in particular. He took a look at his watch and said, "You're dismissed for the night."

I wandered back to our quarters realizing that this might have been the first time in my life when I've been given a major task to do and the outcome truly didn't matter. No congratulations or reward for finishing. No, atta-boy. No nothing. It was just over.

It was a textbook-worthy lesson in how to destroy an individual's motivation. Expectancy Theory holds that motivation is a product of the individual's expectation that a certain effort will lead to the intended performance, the instrumentality of this performance to achieving a certain result, and the desirability of this result for the individual. According to that theory, removing the expectation that a certain effort will lead to a certain result is a guaranteed method of destroying someone's motivation. 

The lesson had worked, but it was only the beginning of the de-motivation process. Our group of recycled losers spent the next several weeks digging holes just to dig holes and putting coats of fresh paint over coats of fresh paint. The removal of traditional motivation really wore on a lot of my buddies, but it had the opposite effect on me. I found freedom in focusing on doing a task well without worrying about the outcome.
The efforts of my entire life had been geared towards achieving outcomes. For the span of those weeks between Ranger School cycles, it was clear that life was about participating in tasks - not achieving rewards. My career as an infantry officer was in jeopardy. My loved ones were time zones away. It was rare for a half hour to go by when I wasn't reminded that I was a failure; yet it was one of the happiest times of my life.

The Dalai Lama said that "Attachment is the... cause of suffering." Zen practitioners and Christian mystics would not be surprised that I found happiness in a situation designed to be miserable. The situation severed my attachment to wordly outcomes, a key task in opening oneself up the the Divine. There was no where to go and nothing to achieve. All I could do was work on the task at hand to the best of my ability. When it was time, I'd be given another task. My role was to follow the tasks set out before me - the Way. In the midst of that experience, I realized that was always my role. I'd just never seen it before.

I've struggled to maintain that outlook throughout the years: do the work that needs to be done without worrying about the final outcome. Care for those that need care, love those that need love, stand up for those who could not stand up for themselves. Not letting the drive for success or fear of losing someone prevent me from truly experiencing the task at hand. 

Unfortunately, it's a painful lesson and it seems to always require relearning. As Father Robert E. Kennedy said, "This noble truth so easily falls from the lips, yet it is a lifelong struggle to see things clearly and to free ourselves from deluded and possessive love."

Night Land Navigation and the "Search for Meaning"

Note: Thanks to everyone who sent me messages and cards over the last few months telling me that the book helped them through hard times or asking me to continue writing this blog. It means a lot to me and gives me a reason to keep writing.


The night sky was dark.  The moon and stars covered by clouds. The black shadows of the thick forest in front of me were even darker. I couldn't use the flashlight attached to my hip. The course rules allowed it to only be used for checking the map or "charging up" the glow-in-the dark direction markers on the compass.

The clock was ticking.  Success in night land navigation doesn't only depend on finding the assigned points.  You've got to find them under the allotted time.

I took a step with my left boot, one with my right, and another with my left. "Fifty two, fifty three.." I counted each left step in order to get my pace count.  Sixty four left steps was approximately a hundred meters.  After each hundred meters, I slid a bead from the top to the bottom of my string of "Ranger beads." Three beads lowered on the string meant three hundred meters. Eight beads meant eight hundred meters. The only way to gauge the distance walked over dark terrain..

"Fifty four, fifty five.." Branches against my face, pushing on my fogging classes. I stepped around a bush, then glanced down at the compass. I was a little off. I rotated my body until the magnetic needle matched up to the bezel's luminous line marking 23 degrees, and then continued forward.

"Fifty six, fifty seven.." My left foot didn't find the ground. I fell down and into the darkness. No way to stop the fall. Not knowing if the fall would be six inches or six feet. My stomach pulled up into my throat. Air rushed by my face.

I landed on gravel. Feet dropping awkwardly; the rest of my body spread out forward.  My left knee and elbow stung from the fall. My hands braced against small pebbles. My mind struggled to find comprehend what the change in topography meant.

Was this the dry creek bed? I wasn't expecting to hit it for another eighty meters.Was my pace count off or my azimuth? Or was this a smaller tributary, something that didn't show up on the map?

I pulled the map out from my cargo pocket.  The red lens flashlight glowed over the clear plastic that encased the map. I was looking for a grid coordinate that was about ten meters from the dry creek bed.  This dry ditch looked like the dry creek bed on the map, but if my direction was off then... I stopped my mind from running down the list of negative possibilities. Assume this is right and work from there.

I couldn't see the glowing destination point from my location. I set an western azimuth along the dry creek bed and then moved forward fifteen steps. Scanning the darkness to my left. Shadows danced in and out of my view, but no light. The destination point would be marked by a partially unwrapped green glow stick. I strained my eyes out into the darkness. Still nothing.

I looked down at my compass and set a reverse azimuth one hundred eighty degrees from where I'd come. I took fifteen steps back to where I'd come. I tried to calm myself. Slow down.  Don't lengthen the steps beyond what I'd taken to get here.

Then fifteen more steps in the other direction of the dry creek bed. The section I hadn't traveled yet. My eyes fought through the darkness trying to find the light. My pulse quickened. I had to be close. The map said it would be about ten meters from the creek bed.

"What if the glowstick fell off the destination point?" The thought was so tangible in my head that it could have been whispered.

Focus on the task. Darkness, compass, map - all I needed to find where I was going. No room for doubt.

"What if the glowstick fell off the destination point? It was probably attached with a little parachute cord and tape. Wouldn't take much to slip loose."

My eyes scanned the night in front of me. Darkness and shadows. I looked to my right. Darkness and shadows. I looked to my left. Still nothing.

"If the glowstick's still in it's wrapper and fell on the ground, then you'll never be able to see it. You're wasting your time.  Go onto the next point."


In all of the night land navigation courses I'd been on, I'd never had the glowstick fall of the point I was looking for, but the thought haunted me all the same. There was more than one time that I'd given up on finding a point, but I always found out later that other people that had found it. The destination was always there and I had the basic physicals tools I needed to find it - the mental part was a whole other ballgame.

Nothing is more toxic than losing faith in your goal, in your purpose. Dr. Viktor Frankl delves deep into this truth in his book, Man's Search for Meaning. The book describes Dr. Frankl's struggle for survival during his three years in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. In the harshest of circumstances, Dr. Frankl learned critical lessons about the necessity of purpose to human existence.

The prisoner who lost faith in the future - his future - was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay.

Dr. Frankl's lesson extends beyond the boundaries of the concentration camp into everyday reality. Each of us has to face down the question of our meaning. Why are we hear? The broadest form of this question is a tenet of faith and it is hard to retain a firm grasp on amid the life's difficult, changing circumstances.

We must focus on the meaning of each moment, each situation. What am I challenged by life to do now? Father Robert E. Kennedy describes this dynamic in Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit. "[W]e do not know God's will. We do know that we are to serve, forgive, and be compassionate to one another, but how practically we are to do these things is only revealed to us moment by moment as the circumstances of our lives evolve."

Dr. Frankl provides specific guidance in how to find the meaning in each moment, each situation:

 [T]here are three main avenues on which one arrives at meaning in life. The first is by creating a work or doing a deed. The second is by experiencing something or encountering someone; in other words meaning can be found not only in work but in love.... Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and may by doing so change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph.

The purpose is there. It may not be in the place we expect or even in the direction that we're looking, but it's there. It's just a matter of opening our eyes to reality and the tools we have to confront it.


Note: Dr. Frankl had another quote that I couldn't figure out how to work in, but I thought it was too important to leave out. "Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!"