Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going? Whom do I serve? Who will I become? What must I do? What is ‘the good life’? Can I live it? Is family ‘worth it’?
Medal of Honor recipient John Chapman was the best of the best. A Combat Controller (CCT), he had undergone one of the most grueling training regimens on earth. Now he was a minted member of the most accomplished, deadliest branch of U.S. Special Forces. Chapman’s story, told in Alone at Dawn, seems to culminate on the battlefields of Afganistan, as he heroically lay down his life to protect his brother soldiers. Yet, according to the man himself, his story had culminated long before he had ever been in combat.
Several weeks prior to his final deployment, Chapman had a conversation with a fellow CCT. He talked about how he and his wife, Valerie, were raising their two young children, “on a quiet cul-de-sac, sitting with other parents, watching their children play. He spoke of how he and Val approached raising the girls as a team,” contrasting his own “approach with that of many other[s]… who viewed family as something that came second to missions or career, and how it wasn’t until…[his daughters] were born that he recognized the error of that approach. ‘My job now is to serve my country, but there’s a greater thing than that. When this war is over, I’m going to dedicate myself to my family,’ John declared.”
Struck by the profundity of Chapman’s thoughts, his comrade later noted how “intensely personal” the former’s commitment to family was. “It was clear that he and Val loved each other deeply” and worked as authentic partners. Taken at face value, Chapman’s stance seemed to de-value everything a CCT endures and achieves to deserve the appellation. His fellow serviceman, however, assessed those statements with measured intuition: “What really stood out was his humanity and the way he approached family.”
For we civilians, living our ordinary daily lives, it is all too easy to lose sight of the importance of that ‘ordinary’. Some forgetfulness comes from distractions we insist on making part of life: phone, social media, drive, phone…repeat. Some forgetfulness is probably inevitable, due to the necessities of life. But the truly ordinary, true living is family life. The changing of diapers, the potty training, the educating, the disciplining…Responsibilities are the stuff of ordinary life. So are joys: welcoming new life into the world; playing ball with the kids; gardening with them in the spring; delighting in the family’s delight; tending to the family’s tears; sitting, as Chapman and his beloved did, with other parents; visiting and sharing the growth of one’s family. These are all so very ordinary…yet so important…in fact, the most important.
Without family life, culture, that shaper and product of human flourishing, crumbles. Without family life, countries fall and civilizations collapse. Family life such as Chapman lived, the culmination of the love between husband and wife, is the one thing that makes good sense in this increasingly topsy-turvy world. Our current culture is deeply troubled. A poisonous political atmosphere is characterized by increasingly noisy partisan belligerence, much of it camouflaging unified, cynical manipulation and self-serving. American cities and neighborhoods are losing/destroying social cohesion at an astounding rate. Rates of despair, mental disturbance, and dependency among the youth have never been higher. Don’t like it? Change it!
Easier said than done…but doable all the same. “Cultural change…demands from every one the courage to adopt a new lifestyle…the primacy of being over having, of person over things,” notes John Paul II. As yet, we are still free to choose the ordinary, the little, the hidden, knowing that that is the sole way to meaningfully change course, and serve the common good. If you wish the good, seek the truth, love the beautiful, honor the sacrifice of John Chapman and those like him…then live the ordinary, live family life to the full. “If you want to bring happiness to the whole world, go home and love your family.” Amen, Mother Teresa. Amen.
Castricum Ranch 