The Daily Stoic - Lt. David Carey Uncovering Our Own Capacity To Get Through Anything

Episode Date: July 29, 2023

Ryan speaks with Lieutenant David Carey in this second of a two-part interview about the bonds that he and his fellow POWs formed in captivity, why he feels no hatred to the guards who imprisoned and tortured him, his relationship with former cellmate Senator John McCain, how his experiences put daily life in perspective for him, and more.David Carey is a retired Navy Lieutenant Commander who served in the Vietnam War, as well as an author, motivational speaker, consultant, and trainer. After being deployed aboard the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany in 1966, he was forced to eject over North Vietnam and taken as a Prisoner of War. After serving 2,022 days in the camp, David was released during Operation Homecoming in 1973 and was awarded the Legion of Merit with Valor. Since his retirement from the Navy in 1986, David has dedicated his work to sharing his experiences in the hopes of helping others through his speaking and training engagements and his book The Ways We Choose, Lessons for Life from a POW's Experience. David’s work can be found at davecarey.com.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time

to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. This episode is part two of my interview with Captain Dave Kerry, a POW in Vietnam. He served on the same ship, took off from the same ship, was shot down in the same plane as Admiral James Stockdale, who we've talked about many times before. And we just had a beautiful chat out here at the Painted Port. He lives in Georgetown. We had a beautiful chat about his experiences,

about testing these stoic ideas in the laboratory of human experience. I was just so struck by the scene he talks about getting a knock on the wall and sort of getting past the message, hey, remember, Stockdale says, remember what Epictetus said. You know, just the idea, Stockdale, just assuming that all his fellow

prisoners were equally briefed on philosophy. I just found that to be both hilarious and beautiful and Dave and I had a great conversation. It was truly an honor to talk with him. And I think you're really going to like this. He said something I've been thinking a lot about actually ever since. He said, when you're having a conversation, remember the goal is always to get to the next conversation. You don't want to close doors with people. You don't want to close people off. You don't want to say things that can't be unsaid,

which itself is a really important stoic idea. And it's just always good to get that from someone who's, you know, really lived and tested that idea over the course of a long and inspiring and courageous life. We talked about this last week. Captain Dave Kerry graduated from the Naval Academy. He was a carrier pilot in Vietnam. He could shot down. He spends five and a half years there as a POW. He wins five bronze stars, two Marituria service medals, the Purple Heart, eight air medals, and the Navy Commendation Medal.

He retired as a captain, and he's written this great book, The Ways We Choose Lessons for Life from a POW's experience. I think you're really gonna like this interview, and so good that I wanted to stretch it out over two spots, so it could really sink in. You can grab signed copies of Captain Kerry's book at the Payneed porch or you can go to his website, DaveKerry.com.

Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wonder East Podcast Business Wars. And in our new season, two of the world's leading hotel brands, Hilton and Marriott, stare down family drama and financial disasters. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. ... ... Was it helpful for you also, I imagine, like you're not just getting something,

you're not just giving to the group, sorry, you're not just getting something out of the group therapy, but you're also helping other people. Do you think having a purpose and a mission in that sense was, was helpful? Yeah, it was. It most certainly was. I don't, you know, we weren't smart enough. We were just fighting, you know, pilots, you know, we weren't smart enough to know

much about some of this stuff. Sure. But, but I think we knew intuitively, we knew that these discussions were good for us. And that it was good for us to be candid and honest about what had happened to us, how we felt about it, what we thought about what our concerns were. And so, I mean, you know, before I left the States, I have never, up until that I have never been a fan of counselor shrinks. Not in this stuff, you got to be kidding me. However, I now am a fan of counselor shrinks, given that they're not working on their own agendas. But because we were just created the process outside of ourselves, I'm

sure we were. Sure. You know, it's either, first of all, if I get it out of my head, either verbally or in writing, it makes me focus on what is going on up here. It's not just a mess And then and then it also gives me some distance on it so I can look at it a little more subjective subjectively, okay and it was, so we just, we didn't know that all this stuff we're talking about, we didn't know.

We just did, you know, this was a situation and this was how we best found our way to deal with it. I mean, I find when I journal, just getting it from here to here, it's not very far. No, it's a huge difference. Cause now I can be like, that's insane. That's right. Don't tell anyone that.

Don't tell anyone that's too late. That's not a good way to treat people or you're not being nice to yourself here. That sounds silly when you stay out. And then it's not here, it's here, but I think also more importantly, it's not there. It's not there. It's not the person, it's not on the person in front of you in traffic. It's, it's, this is, this is safe. This is a safe place. That's a safe place. Just like the counselor should be a safe place. Yeah. If they're not

working their own agenda, it should be a very safe place. Yeah. Yeah. And you guys created a safe place inside a very not safe place. Yes, we did. Yeah. It was, it was, and we'd tell each other anything, everything we did. I mean, even to, even to stuff, you know, from our former lives. Sure. Sure. I mean, I know, we just had our 50 union of when we released, and I know lots of names. I know all the, most of these guys I wouldn't recognize if they walked up and hit me. Sure. But I know their name, and I might know a little bit about them too. Hey, I know what you did.

So it's kind of a bond that exists in that, that group of people that's really pretty remarkable. Yeah, but we cut ourselves off from that because we feel not worthy or we're ashamed or we can't put words to it. Yeah, or yes, and it goes back to it just goes around in circles in our heads. Yeah, we're not. Were you angry ever?

How did you deal with the anger? I don't recall being angry. That was kind of upset with myself that I've touched this airplane up. That was stupid. At the time it seemed brilliant, you know how these ideas are. We have, like, if it had worked, it would have been, whoa.

But I don't remember being angry now Angry I mean you if so you picture groups of men locked up 24 7365 2000 days yeah, yeah, we had lots of difference of opinions I mean we got different different life experience different world world views different I mean, we've got different life experience, different world views, different upbringing, different everything. And so we'd have some hellacious, good arguments, maybe even push each other on a little bit on a rare occasion. But at the end of that, here we are.

We're still together. So what do you want to talk about now? Yeah. But you didn't feel angry at the things that were done to you, at the people who were doing it to you? Well, it's a time. I probably was not very pleased with those people, yes. We didn't like them. We didn't like them. And some of them we probably actively hated. But that was, I think in my memory, that was transient. I mean, you know, really truly,

they were just doing their jobs. You know, the guards, if they were told to beat us, they beat us, if they were told to leave us alone, they left us alone, if they were just people. I think, now some of them we dreaded, that's a probably a better word, we dreaded. But, well, anyway, in in my memory I don't see a lot of hate. I don't feel a lot of hate. That's probably good. I mean that's a very good thing to us. So they just did what they were supposed to. I tell people, hey, if those guys knew how much money

I was making off of that experience, they'd be spinning in their graves. They would just be... Or just the life you went on to lead. Yeah. Or yes. And we just tell them that too. It's telling, we didn't tell the interrogators because they were a little more serious, but we if the gun guards had come around we'd tell them

They didn't understand much and say you're gonna be here. I'm on But at some point you'll get to go back to San Diego. That's right, which is not handled in your stuck here, right? I remember we got worried about the landing on the moon and the gun guard came around that night. What did it, what did it, incredible contrast? Oh my goodness. We put somebody on the moon, are you kidding? And you're in a 19th century prison.

Yeah, well that's exactly right. We're in a 19th century prison. The gun guard comes by and the moon was up there He didn't speak English. We didn't speak Vietnamese. That's him. Moonsie moons are I have no idea what he might have understood, but sure, but we were Although, maybe you could have said it in French. In your case. Yeah. Yeah. Well, gun guards didn't speak French.

Some of the interrogators spoke some French. Yeah. What about anger afterwards? I think about this with stockdotes. It's something I've been trying to wrap my head around. Stockdil is in the Gulf during the Gulf of Tonkin incident. He would reflect later again. you know, did he say, how much of this is memory afterwards?

But he would reflect like, how was there? And I don't know what they saw, but I didn't see anything. And so I just wonder how, in some ways it makes the whole experience more incredible because talk about having, he's having to maintain the faith in something that he has very real reason to doubt and question. But as you came home or at the longer you were

spent there, did you feel anger or resentment that you were sent there in the first place that you had to undergo what you went through? No. No. Hey, I wanted to fly jet airplanes off an aircraft carrier. And I didn't care where or how, I was no philosopher, right? I didn't care where or how,

I figured somebody back there is, knows what they're doing. You were just doing your job. I didn't get to fly an airplane off a carrier. Yeah. So now, you could probably imagine the war became a huge topic of discussion. I mean, we would talk about that every which way from Sunday

and then start all over again and do the, we were, and we had guys with us who had like geopolitical education or some history or something and so we didn't know that. But I don't, I think we had to think and maybe we didn't know to any better to think otherwise, that somewhere in Washington or in the Puzzle Palace, somebody knew and was on the right track. So I'll tell you something else. So I've been, I have been this close to communism. Yeah. All right up front in my face, I've seen the true believers, the true believers. I've watched

how they treat those people, you know, at night when it would get quiet in some of the prison camps, when it get quiet, you could hear the loud speakers over the wall in the village. And so, then get real quiet, we'd be getting ready to go to sleep and you'd hear over the walls, the speakers going, and they'd have the war going on those speakers. Yeah. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, those people on and off like it switches it and and and it was it was it was absolutely remarkable and there is no not a shadow of a dot in my mind that I will never live that way of course I'll take my guns and go into the mountains yeah I'm never gonna live that way. Sure. This whole idea of socialism or communism, it doesn't work. I mean, it's proven to not work.

Sure, sure. Somebody's going to be in charge. And so there's always somebody. It's just, so what we have in the United States may not be the best form of government there is, but it's better than anything else that exists. Sure. And so I've watched that happen over there. be the best form of government there is, but it's better than anything else that exists. And so I've watched that happen over there. I've seen, and let me tell you, Ho Chi Minh

wasn't sleeping on a rock. Right. He wasn't eating a head goblet, a handful of rice. Right. So it's just another way of taking advantage of people or controlling people, I think. We had lots of, they gave us books. So in this last period of time, occasionally we would get a book. Okay. One time we got a Bible. They came in and gave us a Bible. We said, look at this.

And there were about nine of us, maybe in that cell at that time. And so we decided we would all start reading at a different point and we would hot box a Bible 24 hours. It's 24.7. And so that's what we did because we knew it would go away. And now if you picture that if you were if you were assigned to start reading in Leviticus or somewhere and Somebody wakes you up at two o'clock in the morning says it's your turn now, and you're gonna read all the big hats like oh my go But so we had it for a few days and then it went away and by that time between us we had covered the whole thing They gave us some books on Communists, written by mostly the Russian. You know, Vietnamese and the Chinese aren't happy campers, because the Chinese over the history of all this overrun Vietnam several times, that's why they were allied with the

Russians. That's why they were Russian makes. They were, so why they were Russian Sam's. That's right. Russians. That's why they were Russian makes it was why they were Russian Sam's that's right. But they gave us some books written by the Communist. I mean they don't write anything else. And so they're in the volume of Vietnamese studies, I forget which volume it is, but there's several volumes of Vietnamese studies. When you get to the volume about World War II, it talks about why World War II ended. Now you thought it was because we nuke the Japanese. That's not why it ended. It ended because of the valiant victory won by the people's liberation forces of Vietnam in some little gun battles somewhere

You know they just make up their own history sure sure but the world You know that that philosophy In that philosophy communism the end justifies the means sure so if the end is always the utopian Communist state it justifies any means to get there and so what we would see when we look around the world is lots of means. When we think of sports stories, we tend to think of tales of epic on the field glory. But the new podcast Sports Explains the World brings you some of the wildest and most surprising sports stories you've never heard, like the teenager who wrote a fake Wikipedia page for a young athlete and then watched as a real team fell for his prank.

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redefine your understanding of sports and their impact on the world. Listen to sports explains the world, on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to sports explains the world early and add free on Wondery Plus. I was funny when I spoke at the Naval Academy, I was talking about sort of some of the recent book bannings and some of the fears about different ideas and I was telling a story that Stockdale is there, he's being interrogated and they start to sort of give him all this

propaganda. And he starts to debate with them and talk with them because when he was at Stanford he'd read Marx in the original and he knew the works better than his interrogators and there is this idea of sort of certain ideas are bad, certain ideas are controversial, certain ideas are scary, so we push them away, but I think he's such a fascinating example of, well engage with the material, I won't let it change or affect me, but I'm going to know what the enemy thinks. That's right. That's right.

So, who else did you find while you were there, was a leader or a resource that sort of shaped and inspired you? Imagine McCain is there at the same time, but days there at the same time. McCain was shot down out of my squadron about a month after I was or two months after I was. I only lived with him in the same cell one time for about six weeks, but he had also been one of my instructors in flight training. So I kind of knew John. He's a great guy. I didn't agree with everything he thinks, but he was a great, great guy.

Absolutely great guy. Tough as nails. He was there, Bud. I only lived with Bud for about six weeks one time. No, the guys that, the guys that I lived with, we're all J.O.'s, which was a good thing to be. It was a J.O. It was not good to be senior. It was good to be just a J.O. Less responsibility on your shoulders.

And the Vietnamese, I mean, they looked at their own jails. They're like, he doesn't know anything. They don't know anything. We go get the senior guys. Sure. So I remember one time I told the interview to that, he wanted to know something and I said, look, I don't know. He said, you tell me. I said, you understand.

I'm a junior officer. I don't know anything. If you want to know that, you you gotta go get a senior guy. Yeah. You can't imagine how bad I felt when I came back to the myself, I had to tap on the wall. Oh, by the way, I told him to go get a senior guy. I forgot.

Oh, me, I told him you know the answer. I told him you know. That wasn't a good move, but, you know the answer. You know, that wasn't a good move, but you know, but that's that's the burden of command is that it comes with privileges and responsibilities. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I heard someone say that what there's that acronym rank has its privileges, but it's

actually rank has its responsibility. It's those. It most certainly does. I mean, obviously, famously with McCain, he could have gotten some special treatment. Right? He could have, he, there was an opportunity to leave sooner. Yeah. You remember the little clip they played of Him laying in the hospital bed all casted up and everything when he was running for president? You know, they came in one day and they told him, you're going home. Yeah. We got a delegation. We're giving it. They figured out who his father was

and he said, no, I'm not. Yeah. Now, I always let this tickles me because they literally picked him up. He had, he had this much control over what was going to happen to zero. They could have just carried him out the door. But instead, of course, I got all upset with him because he's saying no and threw him back in with the rest of us. Yeah. He was interesting guy. I imagine that is one of those decisions that in the moment you feel one way, but then you have to deal with the consequences of said decision subsequently,

and that's where it hurts. That's what it hurts. Well, you ain't came out of the hospital and took him back over and threw him into a cell in Wall-O and they didn't care if the gas broke or didn't break, or so he healed a mess, of course. threw him into a cell in Wall-O and they didn't care if the cast broke or didn't break. So he healed a mess, of course. Well, that's what I meant about anger.

When he goes to lift his arm for the rest of his life and it can't raise, it doesn't seem unnatural to me that one might be a little angry about that, but that anger eats you up. Yeah, that's, you just can't let things like that, uh, fester, you know, uh, so he, I don't know specifically how John dealt with it, but I know the anger, he was not, uh, festering kind of anger resentment. I don't. Does going through what you went through, I would be curious, like, does it turn down the

volume on pretty much everything else for the rest of your life? You're like, it's singing. I was in a Vietnamese prison. This line at the DMV is the line at the DMV. I'll get through it. Yeah. Yeah. It puts things in perspective.

It does. Now, I don't say that to my wife. I say sweetheart, I understand you really I'm saying. That sounds like a huge deal. But I think, so my first wife died from breast cancer and then I remarried. I think either of those So my first wife died from breast cancer and then I re-married and I think either of those women Would would tell you that not much bothers me. I Don't get too worked up about I don't get worked up about stuff It's just it things are in a different perspective. Does it turn down the volume on the good stuff, too? I don't think so.

Well, most of it looks like good stuff too. That's true, sure. I mean, you know, the truth is I can stand up and walk out that door. At least you're not in this great century prison. This is, this is all right. Sure. Yeah. So I think our, I hate to speak for all these guys, but of course I will.

That doesn't slow me down. I think that our appreciation of what we have and what we enjoy and the way we're able to live and this country is just very enhanced by that experience. And we know that no matter how bad things get, well, I mean, I'm going to die someday. I may get very sick someday. We're all going to die someday. But that's of no concern to me. Remember what Epic teeticell. Yeah, but if you don't be concerned about that, you can, you got no control over it. Yeah. So Seneca is one of the other stokes.

He said, you know, that he pitted people who had never been through adversity, because they didn't know what they were capable of. They hadn't been tested. But I've heard you say that one of the things you took out of your experience is that just because you haven't been tested doesn't mean, just because the average person has been tested doesn't mean they're not incapable of incredible things. That's right. That what you took out of it is that each of us has a sort of a reservoir of adversity or a fortitude and resilience inside of us. Yes. So let's go back to the subject of PTSD, which I know. However, we got around that. I never got to it.

Yeah, which I know however we got around that I never got to it. I'm gonna tell you so I'm at a bar. I don't always hang out at bars, but I'm at a bar and I'm having a drink and there's some a couple sitting next to us. My wife's with me and we're waiting to go to dinner and we start chatting and she's a shrink and That's not a good word to use she's a shrink and and she's working with Soldiers from Ford hood and PTSD around the in the area of PTSD and she's no

Okay, so she says, what do you think? What's your experience? She finds out, Sandy probably said, well, Dave was a field of, he didn't seem to have any PTSD. And she finds, so she says, what do you think? So I told her what I thought, which I'm gonna tell you. But I alienated one shrink when I told her. So here's what I think about PTSD. I think this country, But I alienated one shrink when I told him.

So here's what I think about PTSD. I think this country, we as a culture, as a nation, are doing, have done, and are doing a horrendous disservice to our service people. Because we, in many ways, some of them very overt and some of them very sneaky or you know under the under the radar we tell them we give them the message that if they go where they're going and have to do what they're going to have to do, that they're going to be screwed up.

And they are. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. And then not only that, we have built a whole industry around this. And so we give them the wrong message. And they come back. Now, I'm not denying that some people, I mean, but if you look at WW2 for example, yes, we had people come home shell shot. But if you look at the vast majority of service people

who came home from WW2, they just hitched up their breaches and got on with it. But perhaps that's because they had something similar to that support group that you were talking about, which is that it was a shared experience. It was a shared experience. They were on a boat coming home, so they had time to process.

I see all those things as certainly, certainly contributing to it. But I think we have done, we've really done the service to us certainly contributing to it, but I think we have done, we've really done the service to members of our own forces. The message should be, and this is the message I, when I speak, this is the message, which is, you are way tougher, way stronger, way more resilient, way more creative,

way more flexible than you ever imagined. You just haven't been tested, but it's, but you are. And you see, I think that's a message we should be telling our troops. I think that's a message that should be told at the Naval Academy. They should be being told no matter what happens, you can deal with it. You will get through it. Maybe you may die. I mean, it may be really bad and you may die. Well, then you don't have to worry about it anymore. But in the interim, you can deal with whatever life or the service or combat or whatever throws at you.

Then they have a much higher have a much higher propensity, ability, potential to do that. But if we tell them, hey, you're going to go, this is going to be asymmetrical warfare. You're going to not know who they are. You're going to get all screwed up. You know, they're going to bombs or grenades or going to fire. You're going to be a mess. They come home a mess. When I imagine your message also includes you have the capacity and the strength and

the resources and the support system to deal with trauma or pain or memories. That is included. It's not just you're going to be so tough, nothing will touch you. No. It's that you have the ability to come back from this and it might take a long time, it might be hard, might be years of therapy, might need medication, but you'll get through it. You'll get through it.

Yes. Yes. Yes. It's really, you know, who did JPRA is joint personal rescue agency. Yeah. That's a group within DOD whose charge is to bring, to help bring people back from very difficult situations, hostage situations, POW.

They're trying to be ready for, they've invited me to come talk to them in August. And that's what I'm gonna tell them. I'm gonna tell you guys, don't keep telling these people, they're gonna be screwed up. So if they have problems, you got resources for them, you'll be able to take care of them. But.

That's something I thought about with the pandemic, because I've got two little kids, and the first year parents were talking about it the lot they called it the last year. They would talk about how behind kids were going to be in school, how scarring it was going to be. And I remember saying, like, when I talked to my grandparents who lived in the depression or World War II, they went to this, they never spoke about that thing as, of course it was not an experience they chose or would have wanted to do again, but like all the things in our lives

when we think about breakups or accidents or injuries, it gets integrated into who we are and we think about it as a thing, like Stockdale said, that in retrospect we wouldn't trade away, right? We have the ability to turn it into finding meaning in it, to learn from it, to grow from it. And with enough distance, inevitably we always see what's happened to us as the best thing that could have ever happened. But we tell ourselves in the moment, this is the worst thing that ever happened to me, things will never

be the same again. This is so unfair. And that's that's not fair. Like why not give ourselves the gift of what we're going to feel about it in the future right now. And if the people who are supposed to be helping us talk that way or give us that impression. Sure. It just multiplies the challenge. I remember I was a kid. I got this really terrible uh bike accident. My front wheel, my bike just fell off. And I went over the a kid. I got in this really terrible bike accident my the front wheel my bike just fell off and I went over the handlebars I took the entire blow with one side of my face my lips were conno my braces. I broke my eyes. I was terrible But I woke I you know I got up and I thought I was okay Mm-hmm, you know, I was like obviously I got hurt

You know the body goes in a shock you're you're good at protecting yourself Yeah, and my younger sister she was maybe like 10 or 11, my go inside, I think I need to go to the doctor, but my sister runs and she goes and gets a handheld mirror from the bathroom. She goes, look at your face. And that's the second that it started to hurt. Oh, it hurts.

Oh, she can't leave that. When someone tells you, oh my God, you've been so wronged, you'll never be the same again, you're broken. It compounds all ready bad situations. All ready bad situations. Yeah. It does not help. Yeah.

So anyway, those are my opinions on it. And I'm happy to have had the opportunity to say that. No, I think it makes sense and you're not saying just rub some dirt on it, you'll be okay. No. You're saying that you have within you the capacity to get through this. Get through whatever. There's a Marcus Aurelis quote and he says, you're like a soldier storming a wall. He says, if you have to, if you've fallen and you have to ask a calm rad for help, so what? And I think that is an important part.

It goes to the stories you're telling, which is also though that there is a certain amount of courage and strength required to say, I'm not okay, I feel guilty, I messed up, I'm struggling, that's also not what stoicism or strength is stuffing it down and doing it all yourself, if you don't have to. You don't have to, that's right. And in our culture, you don't have to. You don't have to. That's right.

In our culture, you don't have to. I mean, we have resources that are available, particularly if we think about our armed forces coming back from whatever they've been involved in, sharing. We just need to give the right messages to them. When also that, as Dr. Opal's, the ancients had been through stuff like this before, right? And they wrote about it. And we should avail ourselves of that wisdom instead of... He obviously figured and you did too, you all figured out a bunch of stuff on your own while you were in there, but you were also drawing from the Bible, from philosophers,

from the notes that you're from, you know, the notes that you're getting from friends and family. You're drawing on other people's wisdom and experiences too, and each other. There's nothing new under the sun. That says that in the Bible, doesn't it? It certainly says that in the Bible. We're people. That's why that's why the Bible has such applicability. It's about people and we're people. Yes. You know, and people, has such applicability. It's about people and we're people. And people, unfortunately, don't change. Or fortunately, depending on, you know, we're just people. When your experience as new as it was, you're shot out of a fighter plane by a surface to air missile and a rescued by a parachute, you find out you're not going to be rescued by radio. All that's very new. But in

another sense, yours is the oldest story in all of human experience, the warrior separated from the tribe or the group and forced offend for themselves against the elements in the enemy and then has to reintegrate into society. That's a very timeless story. It is a timeless story. So I'm curious about the title of your book. Why is it called the ways we choose? What do you mean? So when I started, I'll tell you how that came about. So when I started speaking, I started speaking because some friends

encouraged me to and you know, I go to rotary clubs and one rotary club leads to another and they don't care what you talk about as long as they're out of there at 130. You talk about anything you want. They got to be out of there at 130. And I remember when the first time I was offered money to speak. I remember sitting down with Karen, my first wife, we're across the table just like this, and I said, something like, sweetheart, if I'm gonna do this for money, and I had people encouraging me to do that, I've gotta figure out what's worth talking about. Dude, I don't wanna just tell stories.

Sure. There's gotta be... Good storytelling though. Well, thank you. I've had a lot of practice. There's gotta be something out of this experience Thank you. I've had a lot of practice. There's got to be something out of this experience that's transferable. And so that led then to when I talk, what I tell people, just pretend I get there in a good

way, I say the question, most frequently asked about my experience is, how do you do that? Yeah, how could you do that? Yeah, how could you do that? And in my mind, the answer to the question is very simple. We did what we had to do, we did our best, we chose to grow through the experience, we kept our sense of humor, we kept the faith, faith in ourselves, faith in each other, faith in our country, faith in God.

Sure. And I see those things are directly translatable into your lives. Of course. And so then I keep telling the story and I go through that framework and I keep hooking back into what I know is going on either in life or if it's a business, I've already talked to people. I know what their problems are.

I know. Sure. And I just keep hooking it back in. And when I get done with this, at some point, I then say, A, and O, by the way, those are all matter of choice. Sure. This is a matter of choice. The question would be better if I ask it like this. How do you choose to deal with your problems?

How do you choose to deal with your problems? How do you choose to get yourself through your situation? How do you choose to deal with the pressure in your life? How do you choose? Because doing what you have to do, do your best, keep your sense of humor grow, keep the faith. Those are all choices that we make. Now, what happens to us in our lives may well be beyond our control and often are much as we like the control we can. But how we deal with it the ways we choose to deal with these things are always within our control. So that's why the title is the title the way it is. Well maybe this quote came to you through the walls one day but one of Stockdale's favorite epictetus quotes.

And I'm going to butcher it a little bit, but he says, a podium in a prison is each a place. Epictetus said, I mean, he knew that he's a slave himself. So an podium in a prison is each a place in that place, we still maintain a certain freedom of choice. President versus a prisoner has different choices, has different stimulus, different temptations, different options, but nevertheless, there are always remain choices that cannot be taken away from us. You don't control what happens basically, but we control how we respond. How we respond. How we respond. Yeah, and that's the reason for the title,

and that's the way I talk. I mean, that's, I'm not a writer, I must speak her sort of. And I just blew up this, this, what I say in a 45 minutes or an hour to that. Do you feel a certain kinship with people who have been through similar experiences? I was just thinking Dr. Edith Eager, who also lives in San Diego,

she's in her 90s now, but she's a Holocaust survivor. She wrote this beautiful book called The Choice, which basically comes down to very similar thing. When everything else is reduced, we have some small choice about story, we tell ourselves, are we gonna be corrupted by this? Are we gonna be broken by this?

Are we gonna let them strip our humanity from us or not? Have you felt over the years, I'm sure you've met all different sorts of people who've been through harrowing things? Do you guys all kind of understand each other at a certain level having been through been tested in a similar way or no? I'm trying to think of the specific incidents of I can think of. I've been speaking for 30 years. Yeah. All kinds of people come talk to me. And one of the things that stands out is they all agree. That it's a joy.

They agree. These things are a choice. Do what you have to do. Do your best. Keep your sense of humor, grow, keep the faith. I've never had anybody who is anything but totally agreeable with what I had said. They've never heard it in a story like that with examples like that. But they're, they agree with that. And I've had, I have had a few, I'm trying to think of one or two,

I know I've had a few experiences where somebody will wanna talk to me about something that's happened in their life. Yeah. And either how they tried to deal with it or how what happened to them corresponds with what I was saying or something like that. Sure.

I've had a lot, if I had $5 for everybody who's said to me, you know, my dad, my uncle, my nephew, my father was in Vietnam, they don't talk about it at all. I'd be rich. It seems to me from casual observation that the human tendency is to just squish things down. The wrong kind of stoicism. The wrong, yes, it's the wrong kind of approach to it. It's rather than get it out. You know, so I don't know if that answer is your question.

No, no, it does. It definitely does. Yeah. It's um, it ultimately it does. It definitely does. Yeah, it's um, it ultimately does come down to a choice or not a choice, but that's also a choice. That's a choice. To not do, to not respond is a choice to lay there and let it do its work on you as a choice. Yeah. Yeah. I think, um, what is interesting about all your experiences all of you is that you are doing. I think there's a subtitle of one of stocked out of books, right? It's like testing Epic Tidus ideas in the laboratory of human experience, something like that. It's that there are these abstract ideas. ideas, whether it's the training manual or the code or what you learn at the Naval Academy, and then there is the messiness of real life. And we do have a

sense that certain ideas, certain approaches, the five questions you're sort of bringing up, these are these have been validated not just in your experience, but going back 5,000 years and probably going 5,000 years in the future, this is just, when you reduce it down to its very essence, that's what it is. Pretty simple, I think. You know, when I say to people, okay, how are you going to deal with your problems? How are you going to deal with the conflict in your life? How are you going to deal with the pressure in How are you going to deal with the conflict in your life?

How are you going to deal with the pressure in you? How are you deal with the tragedies? Come in. How are you going to do that? There is not much answer except I'm going to have to make choices as I go through this. Right. It's like someone can give you this whole catalog of how it happened, why it happened, whose fault it is, how messed up it is, how much it's going to cost them, and then it still doesn't change the fact that you're going to have to answer.

You've got to do it. It's yours to deal with. Yes. It's not your fault, but it's your responsibility I've heard someone say. That's right. It may not be your fault at all. Yes. Your yours. So, you know, yeah. fault at all. Yes, your Yars.

So, you know, yeah. Did you ever read Victor Frankel? Oh, yes. Yeah. When he talks, I read, I've read Man's Search for Meaning, which I completely agree with. You know, it is a meaning in our life. We have to have a meaning in our life.

Now, I personally believe that meaning is Jesus Christ, because I don't see anything else, it will see anything else that comes close to being the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Everything changes, you know. But when I first read that, we were almost right after we came home. I forget somebody handed it to me and first read that, we're almost right after we came home. I forget somebody handed it to me and I read it and I thought, yeah, he's right.

You know, you gotta have some meaning here or else it's just your drift. And you gotta find specifically meaning in the not so fun stuff. Yeah. Because it's easy to find the meaning in your kids or your job or a beautiful sunset. Yeah, it is. Yeah. But it's when the going gets rough. Yeah. You need, there's got to be some

foundation there. It's like, well, you're familiar with Scripture. So he either build your house on the foundation or on the sand and the sand will shift. So you have to have some basic identity meaning Yeah, and speaking of questions. I think the thing I took most from his work is he says something like We ask what is the meaning of life? Mm-hmm, and then we expect an answer and this is actually life is asking you that question. And your choices, your actions are the answer. Are the answer? Yeah. I like that. Who said that?

Dr. Frankl. Oh, did he? Okay. Okay. Like, yeah, you go through something like what he went through and you go, what was the meaning of all of this? Doesn't this, you know, show that humans are awful and nothing means anything. And he's saying, no, by what I do after, by who I become out of this, the good that I do, the people that I help, that I don't let it break me or make me give up, that's the retort. That's the retort.

Yeah. Good. My last question for you, you're talking about speaking. And we said how nothing is new under the sun. Do you find for you, you were talking about speaking and we said how nothing isn't new under the sun. Do you find, as I do a lot of speaking to, every group thinks that they're special and unique and their business has this unique set of problems and they go, I need a special talk.

And then you just do your regular talk and they go, that's exactly what we need. Oh yeah. That's, you know, they're people. Yes. None of the problems are new. They just, in this case, it's in the widget industry. And in this case, it's ballet dancers. And in this case, it's fighter pilots.

And you all have the same problems. They make the same issues. They make the same problems. You know, so we, yeah. Oh, yes. Absolutely. I just keep saying the same thing. And yes, it's funny as I, so I wrote this book, The Daily Stoke. It's one page of Stoke Philosophy every day,

right? This is a quote from the Stokes at the top. And what I get, I got this, as it, from a text from someone yesterday, they're, they're just put out this movie, and it's coming out, and they're like, you're a quote is about my movie, like that day. And they're like, how did you know? I said, well, I wrote it eight years ago. So I didn't know. But that's who we find what we need to find in the moment. We hear what we need to hear.

Yeah, yeah. I imagine there were days you picked up that Bible. You're a section. And you're like, how did they know? How did they know? And it was totally random and yet not random. That's the same time. That's right.

Well, that's why it's called the living word. It's not called the living word because it's living. It's called, because you're different every time you read. Yes. And so you see different things. Have you heard the quote, no man steps in the same river twice? Right. The Bible heard the quote, no man steps in the same river twice? Right. The Bible is the same. So same, but who you are in that moment is different. It's different. Yeah. So you get different insight from it. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

I read it all the time. I think, I never saw that before. Even though you saw it a thousand. Even though I've seen it. Yeah. I find that with the stokes. I've gone through, I have my same copy that I go through over and over again. And it's like, yeah. I find that with the stokes. I've gone through, I have my same copy that I go through over and over again. And it's like, I know I read this passage because there's my handwriting right next to it. And I not only didn't get it, or I got the opposite of what it meant.

Or it can mean two things. And maybe that's even, we were talking about the Stockdale paradox. It's like what you need, the whole point is by making it a little vague, a little contradictory, a little, I think that's why Jesus spoke in parables. Oh, yeah.

So you can hear what you need to hear in that moment. And so you'd remember something because if he just gave the dissertation, yes, we would never remember it. Why are you lecturing me? It's all about stories. Yeah, we remember the stories. Yeah. Well, your stories have been amazing and I so appreciate you taking the time.

Oh, it's been my pleasure. I'm honored and tickled to have had the opportunity to talk. Thank you very much. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to the Daily Stoic Early and Add Free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music App today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.