Accepting Change by Daniel Walker
“Impact,” I growled over the radio as the amber flashes of detonating bombs consumed our target. In the fall of 2015, my squadron deployed to the United Arab Emirates in support of the allied offensive against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. My commanders tasked me with leading a formation of F-22 Raptor fighter jets, and a six-nation coalition, in an assault on an ISIS stronghold 160 miles North of Baghdad. By the time my formation began our four-hour flight home, the moon had set, and the sun had yet to rise, so illumination was nearly absent. The desert was an ocean of black, except for the flicker of oil stacks and the guiding lights along the Tigris. We followed the zigs and zags of the ancient river as we flew over Baghdad. The city’s glow danced on my gold-tinted canopy as my mind drifted.
At forty-thousand feet, and near the speed of sound, the world seems so small. But every light of that eons-old, war-torn city seemed unconscionably big. It was disorienting for me to think that some of us were fighting that war from our $156 million tech-laden war machines, while others were slogging for their lives on blood-soaked dunes and crumbling streets. For years after I returned to the United States, and peacetime operations, that moment of juxtaposition plagued me until I realized that it was the manifestation of a shift in me.
I entered service at the United States Air Force Academy as an idealistic eighteen-year-old. I developed physically, mentally, intellectually, and spiritually behind the steel and marble of the Academy. When I graduated, I knew who I was and what I wanted to do. Now, at thirty-two, I’ve changed.
The ideas and passions I leaned on so heavily at eighteen are gone and, initially, they left me to wonder what would drive me. I worked my entire life to become a fighter pilot. But, as my wheels met the desert sun’s shine on the runway, I realized being a fighter pilot didn’t align with who I’d become. That news petrified me.
Sometimes the Earth moves from underneath us, and we end up different people, or in different places, or both all at once. That strange feeling of waking up and not knowing exactly who and where you are doesn’t have to be cause for distress, though. Change is inevitable. It’s GOING to happen. But we’re in the habit of fooling ourselves!
We change remarkably over time. But Daniel Gilbert, a psychology researcher at Harvard University, found that though we know we’ve changed before, we don’t seem to think we’ll change much in the future. He calls it the “End of History Illusion,” and it makes liars of all of us.
If our inevitable internal shifts weren’t enough, societies also change in cycles. So while we’re changing – and denying it – our cultures, political circumstances, and overall zeitgeist are shifting as well.
Lastly, but certainly not exhaustively, the tools we use to live, work, and love – our technologies – are changing at rates we can’t individually keep up with. So, if we drift too long in this fantasy of stability, we risk waking up in a complete departure from what we know of ourselves and our surroundings. The farther we depart, the longer the road we have to travel to realignment. That’s what happened to me.
After my night over Baghdad, I laid in my bunk and accepted that I was different (though I didn’t know how or why). But, I was different long before I acknowledged it. So by the time I decided to begin my journey to clarity, I’d unknowingly committed to a five-year expedition of discovery.
The story above is my account of taking step one in the Pivot Process: Accept Change Now. In fact, it’s the entire reason the Pivot Process exists; it was my way back to me. The articles to follow will chronicle the other six steps I took to redefining my path and purpose.