Finding happiness through a sense of purpose

It started out as just another inspection. It was Friday afternoon, and after a week of intense maneuvers with little sleep, followed by the weekly servicing of our tanks all night long. We were exhausted.

Our tanks had finally passed inspection and, full of oil and grease, and having gone without sleep since early Thursday morning, and without a shower since Saturday night, all that stood between us and Shabbat was one last inspection of our barracks. Blankets drawn tight across beds, boots polished to a black shine, gear stowed regulation-style beneath the foot of the bed, guns cleaned and oiled, and floors mopped shiny clean — we could practically taste the showers and Shabbat food that awaited.

And then something went dreadfully wrong and amidst screaming sergeants, flying blankets, and beds tipped over, we were given seven minutes to re-do the entire inspection — outside on the base perimeter in front of the tanks!

As the sun dipped lower on the horizon, and getting more and more depressed, again and again we were ordered: “Thirty seconds around the tanks: MOVE!” We were expected to run around the line of tanks and get back in line within 30 seconds, a hopeless task. And then we were made to run with our beds, and then with our boot lockers, all the while watching the sun dip lower and lower.

I don’t know how it began, but someone started to laugh.

We were behind the tanks so the commanders couldn’t see us, and pretty soon the entire company was in hysterics. We did our best to put on a straight, agonized face once clearing the tanks and coming back into view of our commanders, but they could see most of us were smiling, which only infuriated them more.

With time on our side (they had to end all this before Shabbat) we all came to the same realization that our enjoyment was also our victory: we would not break. Of course, in retrospect, that may well have been the point of the entire exercise (to mold us as a unit), but at the time, the pure joy of recognizing we had nothing more to lose, and we might as well laugh about it as cry, was a powerful experience that stays with me still.