General Jim Mattis

Deal with it.

Just deal with it.

No victimhood, no cynicism.

Deal with reality and keep confidence in yourself and each other.

We'll get through this.

Well, first of all, Margaret, thank you.

Because while Ryan and I have been back and forth communicating many times over the years, this is actually the first time we've ever met in public or met at all.

So thank you for this opportunity.

But the problem that you face, I think, in the military on a personal basis is you're often careening from one crisis to another.

It's just the norm of military life.

Military generally are not used unless there's a crisis of some kind.

And a crisis is often defined by what?

The people who are affected are not in control.

You've got to deal with it.

You're not going to control it.

And so what you do in a crisis as a human being, you fall back on something.

And in my case, I found that by falling back on certain values, I was able to keep myself at least calm enough to take purposeful action, because a lot of people are looking to their officers to say, what are we going to do about this?

And it was in finding a purpose that I stumbled into the study of philosophy.

It wasn't something I picked up in school, frankly.

It was something almost forced on me by my circumstance.