Andy Stumpf

Let's say six people experienced the same thing.

I've seen six different expressions of that from totally laissez-faire attitude with no impact whatsoever to other people.

I mean, I can think back.

I'll leave all the details out of it.

But this was a combination of what would be considered for some people a pretty traumatic or at least scary event and involving people.

Special operations people and support personnel who probably had no expectation to go outside of the wire.

The reactions were very different when this kicked off.

Some people clicked right into work mode and went and did the best they could to engage the problem.

Others were completely paralyzed.

I'm talking...

Unable to move, standing, shaking.

And this is without any level of judgment, by the way.

I'm just talking about the differences in one situation that it can have on individuals based off of who they are, where they are in their life, experiences in life, tolerance to stress, exposure to trauma, level of training, all of these things.

I saw people move rapidly towards solving a problem and other people who were unable to move to the point where one of those individuals left country because of not, I'm not gonna say just that situation, but a culmination of stress leading up to that point.

I would say that was the metaphorical straw that broke the camel's back.

Why is that the case?

I think we're all different size cups and we all have different abilities to deal with stress and trauma.

But if you don't deal with it, guess what's going to happen?

30 years later, something in the modern day can bring back up all of those lovely treasures that we as men like to dig a hole with a big shovel, throw them in, jump on top to make them as flat as possible, and then just stuff them down there with weights and then rebury them.

That's been my experience.