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."