Become Comfortably Numb with Discomfort

-Or slip out of your depth and out of your mind.

Jun 29, 2023

Hello? (Hello? Hello? Hello?)

Is there anybody out there? Just share this with a dozen friends if you can hear me. (Yes, this week’s edition will predictably be riddled with Pink Floyd references and lyrics.)

We are going to launch into a multi-part discussion of two of my favorite topics which are inextricably linked: Rucking and Mental Toughness.

The first question I often get is “What is rucking?” In a nutshell, it is moving with a ruck. Depending on the audience, the second question is usually, “What’s a ruck?”

A ruck is a knapsack, haversack, musette bag, backpack, or rucksack. To paraphrase the bard, A ruck by any other name would smell as bad when it is sweat-soaked.

When I was a child, I had a WWII M1945 field pack that belonged to my grandfather. On summer mornings I would load it with a few PB&J sandwiches and a steel canteen I filled by dunking into the creek until the bubbles stopped. I roamed the woods around my home all day and would return for supper with my pack filled with cool rocks or old bottles I found.

Later, in high school, the pack carried cans of pork and beans, spaghetti-Os, and a six-pack of PBR (when I could get it) along with a mess kit and sleeping bag on camping adventures with my friends nearly every weekend.

But it wasn’t until Phase 3 of Marine Corps boot camp that a pack was called a rucksack, and I really loaded it down for the first time. The pack was named ALICE, short for All-Purpose Lightweight Individual Carrying Equipment. She was filled to bursting with a combat load of somewhere north of thirty-five pounds.

We stepped off on a ten-mile hike to the field training phase before sunrise, but the heat and humidity of coastal South Carolina already lay over us like a curse.

Shortly after starting I began hurting. My brain was frying in my helmet. Hotspots on the balls of my feet ached with each step. The pack straps dug into my shoulders, my arms lost feeling with an affliction called pack-palsy and my hands swelled and felt just like two balloons.

The salt from my sweat crystalized in the places that rubbed, my thighs and inner arms, and my chaffed skin bloody. The only way to limit the pain was to take small steps and not swing my arms, but the pace wouldn’t allow for that.

I was nearly running to keep up, both arms heaving to propel me forward, my rifle sling sliding from my shoulder and the stock slapping into my outer thigh until it was blue. The sun blasted the Paris Island asphalt, the shimmering coming through in waves.

I was incredulous. I was in great shape, but the ruck was kicking my butt.

Finally, a recruit in front of me collapses and mercifully, we stop. A D.I. yells at us to face outboard and drink water, powder our feet, and change socks while the corpsman hover over the victim:

Just nod if you can hear me
Is there anyone home?
Come on now
I hear you're feeling down
Well I can ease your pain
Get you on your feet again
Relax
I'll need some information first
Just the basic facts
Can you show me where it hurts?

Two D.I.s walk past me talking. Their lips move, but I can’t hear what they’re saying. Then I hear one say that we were only halfway there. Five more miles and the sun was still rising. There was no way I was going to make it. Behind me, the Corpsman was preparing an I.V. bag to administer.

Okay (okay, okay, okay)
Just a little pinprick
There'll be no more, ah
But you may feel a little sick
Can you stand up?
I do believe it's working, good
That'll keep you going through the show
The Drill Instrcutor yelled, “Come on it's time to go.”

I pulled myself back to my blistered feet. During the short break, my muscles tightened, and each step was more painful than the one before it.

A truck known as the ‘meat wagon’ followed slowly behind our formation. Recruits who gave up were tossed in. I didn’t know what would happen to them, but I expected the worse.

I was not getting in the meat wagon voluntarily, but I also knew I wasn’t going to be able to make it another five miles.

Another recruit stumbled. I caught a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but he was gone, into the meat wagon.

Then I had an epiphany. I’m sure it was the heat, but it felt like a religious experience.

I didn’t have to make it five more miles.

I just needed to make it to the next telephone pole.

Any idiot can make it to the next telephone pole.

No matter how bad it is you can always make it to the next telephone pole.

Then the next one, and the one after that.

I didn’t understand it at the time, but this realization would come to form the basis of my worldview:

The best way to become comfortable with discomfort is to do things that make you uncomfortable, and you can always do a little more.

As soon as I accepted that it was my fate to keep moving, pole to pole, tree to tree, a funny thing happened.

The pain began receding. A distant ship, smoke on the horizon. I had become comfortably numb.

Okay, so I bent the story to fit the lyrics and modified the lyrics to fit the story, but I swear, it happened pretty much that way.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that every step I took was like tossing a shovel full of dirt over my shoulder for the reservoir of mental toughness I was digging.

And to this day at the start of a ruck, my calves ache and shoulders groan but when my body realizes that I have no intention of stopping it gives in and embraces the suck. When that happens I sing to myself (or sometimes aloud)

🎼 I have become comfortably numb.🎶

Now rucking is pretty much what I do. Not for a living, unfortunately, but to improve my quality of life, maintain my sanity, and keep my mental toughness reservoir deep, and full.

Before I scare you off, not every ruck has to be (or should be) a brutal experience. Next week we’ll start talking about the benefits of rucking and how to reap them.

I hope you’ll stick with me (and invite friends) as we dig into the topics of rucking and mental toughness. I’d love to answer any questions you have.

Read. The Comfort Crisis

by Michael Easter

I can’t believe I haven’t recommended this already. It is one of my favorite books in recent memory, and it is apropos of our topics of rucking and mental toughness. Michael deep dives into the benefits of challenge and discomfort. His newsletter is the only one I pay for. Check him out here: https://eastermichael.com/

Write. (Listen) Silence and Light.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to catch Silence and Light at my favorite Wilmington, NC Raider-owned hang-out The Eagle’s Dare.

From their website: Former Delta Force Operator Brad Thomas and former Army Ranger and Special Forces soldier Jason Everman (of Nirvana and Soundgarden) formed the band Silence & Light in 2017. The band contributes portions of their music royalties to charitable organizations supporting veterans and first responders. Silence & Light represents all four branches of the service with co-founder and former Marine Raider Tyson Stahl on bass guitar, Air Force Chief Master Sergeant Fred Cowell on vocals, and Navy veteran Justin Myers on drums.

In the summer of 2022, Silence & Light recorded and co-produced their sophomore album in their hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina with Dick Hodgin (Hootie & the Blowfish, Corrosion of Conformity, and many more). The album is set to release summer of 2023 and features the singles “Slinky”, “Purple,” and “Straight Lines”.

Check out the official video for the single, Slinky from their new album “Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda…” and support a band that supports veterans and first responders.

Repeat.

Words of wisdom from those who said it best:

"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude." – Thomas Jefferson

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit." – Aristotle

"It is what it is. But it will be what you make it." – Pat Summitt

"If you're going through hell, keep going." – Winston Churchill

Thanks for reading Think. Read. Write. Repeat. See you next Thursday!