Remembering during the holidays

Today is Christmas, today is a day to remember why we are here.  We are here to celebrate our loved ones.  I’ve missed many holidays over the years but I’ve somehow only missed one Christmas in 2004.  I’ve been very fortunate and so I spend holidays with family but then I think of all the people who can’t make it home for the holidays and one thing I love is getting together with people who can’t be around their families and having dinner.  I’m always a little sad because I can’t remember a Christmas in the last 10 years when I didn’t know someone who was overseas away from their families.  I know they are with loved ones and celebrating the best they can.  We see a lot of attention pouring into our efforts to make sure they are remembered but I wish we would remember all the veterans who came home but never really came home.  These men and women often have such a difficulty assimilating into society and refuse to get help.  They often wind up homeless and helpless.  It’s a disturbing thing to know that so many of our nation’s heroes just don’t have the ability to get themselves the help they need. Our nation loves a hero when they need one; we put them on pedestals and turn our men and women in the armed forces into something we can’t live up to.  As members of the military, especially combat arms, we find out what the power of ruling over life and death is.  We find out what it feels like to be thought of as a hero and it makes us uncomfortable.  We often times have trouble dealing with the things we’ve done in the name of good.  It’s not an easy thing to reconcile and causes a serious case of cognitive dissonance when you have to do bad things in the name of good.  We come home and have all the power taken away from us; we are left with our adrenaline addiction and hero complex but no way to satisfy the urges.  We are made sad every day by the things we see with no way to fix them.  We can’t let go of the idea that we had the ability to truly change the world and remove evil.  This causes us to feel isolated and to believe that our loved ones can never understand.  We feel sad for the people who actually can understand because that means they have seen the same horrible things.  As a society we need to be more open to the people we see on street corners, less judgmental and more loving.  That person may not be able to function in a society that doesn’t need them as heroes.  They may feel worthless and useless; they may believe that living that way is all they deserve.  While we remember our heroes abroad during the holidays I would like us all to remember the ones we have here who may never be able to stop fighting the battles in their hearts and minds.