Costner: Transition

I have been long in my post in the Orient. Before deployment, my expectation was for 5 years; I am now approaching 5 and one half years abroad. This place is still of great interest to me, I feel I still have a tremendous amount to learn from the people and about their language and customs. In many ways life here can be challenging. In other ways I have come to feel a great deal of comfort in my day to day existence, so much so that I could see another 5 years passing by me quickly as I move through current obligations, build other interests, and remain swept up in the dynamism of the shifting landscape of my obligations here.

Yet there is something in me that would not be content without a big move at some point in the near future. I see others here on the frontier who seem stuck; comfortable, with all their material needs met, basking in the exceptionalism afforded them by the fact that they are exotic, different, and in demand due to some luck of commerce. But there feels to be a float in the way some people move through their time here. Contentment leads to complacency.

One is inclined to think that great ideas come only so often--they are hard sought, and, once had, lead invariably to success. I have heard a lifetime of great ideas in my time here. What I have not seen is more than a handful of men or women willing to take their idea and see it all the way through to its fruition. Seeing an idea through takes more than that special gusto that comes after the second beer at the canteen. It takes discipline, organization, perseverance. I have read somewhere that greatness is a lonely travail. I believe seeing these ideas through also requires some degree of loneliness--traveling to a place that others will not go, that many do not understand. I am not sure if I am ready for that journey. Then again, I have not yet made a very good try at it.