Climbing Mountains
The harder and the longer the climb, the higher the mountain and the better the view when you get to the top.It’s not easy to get ahead. Remember how difficult it was to memorize the ‘times table’? But you did it and you survived.
When I was in high school I did just enough to get by. I don’t seem to remember any marking period that I didn’t have a private meeting with Miss Ebbert, our principal.
She would look at me and sigh, “John, the only way to coast is down.”
It took two years of hard work after high school before I began to realize that there had to be a better way.
Then the Korean War came along and I became very patriotic and enlisted in the Navy before I got drafted into the Army or Marines. That was a smart move because I received my Draft Notice when I was in Navy boot camp. I really didn’t feel like carrying an M1 and sleeping in a frozen ditch in the Korean mountains.
There was a catch to my survival though. The only option open for me to get into the Navy quickly was that I had to commit to attend school.
The military has an incentive policy that can be summarized by, “you’ll learn, or else.”
I learned and shortly after graduating Electronics School I went out into the fleet to serve on a destroyer, USS TAYLOR DDE 468, in Asia.
Fate stepped in again and all the senior people above me had been reservists who had been reactivated to get the Navy back into fighting shape. I became the senior person, the Leading ET, by default.
It was then that I wrote on a piece of paper that I have kept in front of me since:
“There is no privilege that exists without a corresponding responsibility”.
So if you want a good view, you have to climb a mountain. There is no other way.
