An explanations of sorts....

It was put to me this weekend, the question of why I decided to enlist in the Guard and I feel as though I should try to explain my rationale, even if the person who asked me it may never be satisfied with my answers.  (To which she is most likely to say that it is my decision but I am still wrong and she is right and she won the argument.)

I'm not going to lie, the money they were offering was a big argument for enlisting.  I want to go to grad school, and I'd rather not pay for it.  I know there are other ways of getting money, but this was the route I chose.

Secondly, I needed a change in my life.  The place I was in my life wasn't too pretty and I was starting to question everything I was doing.  I was tired of playing things safe in my life and felt the only way to break the cycle was to do something completely out of character and possibly stupid.  

I think one of the biggest reasons I decided to enlist was due to my innate desire to serve my country in some fashion.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those types who refuses to acknowledge the bad parts of my country.  I am quite vocal about what I consider to be wrong with the country.  But for whatever reason I have always thought that everyone should give something to help make this country a better place.  I got really annoyed during the election when I kept hearing "Country First" coming from people who have never volunteered or offered to do anything to serve their country.  

I'm not trying to make myself into some Kierkegaardian hero, claiming my sacrifices make me better than anyone else, but I've tried to live my life helping and serving others.  I feel that enlisting in the Guard is a natural extension of this idea.  It was also hard to read about all of the difficulties faced by the soldiers who deploy, especially since many of my friends have deployed and served overseas.  I felt as though I needed to do my part to help them.  It's hard to explain why, I think it has to do with sharing the experience, not necessarily of deploying, but at least being in the military and understanding what that life entails.  

So there you go, an imperfect, but reasoned argument for why I sold my soul to the military.  I'm not saying that the Army is the greatest institution out there.  I've seen too much of how it operates already to have very high expectations of Army life.  I may try to write about the shortcomings of the military later once I've spent more time there, and besides that's not the purpose of this post.  The only thing I know is that this was my decision and decision alone and whatever may happen I chose this and that makes me feel happy.