Punishment Detail

Never went to any of the cool Army schools.

Like Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training.

I spent most of my military career honing my Excel conditional formatting skills.

Useful, right up until people figure out that AI can do that for them.

Or the lights go out and we’re back to finding food somewhere without a produce aisle.

Guy I worked with told me once about how they deal with mistakes during the simulated prison camp phase.

They don’t punish you, they punish someone else.

And you get to decide who.

“Pick one for punishment”.

It’s meant to break down unity, help cadre divide and conquer.

Unless you’re a SERE student, or actually in a prison camp, usually the one that gets picked is you.

And the one doling out discipline?

Also you.

And we’re quick to hand out punishment to ourselves, struggling as we do to see ourselves as worthy of the better things.

Like grace. Respect. Genuine love.

When we so someone else doing it, we still frame it as a negative.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” usually.

Sometimes we get it right.

“Give yourself some credit,” maybe.

Good advice, and we promptly forget that we had that credit banked the next time we find ourselves facing down choices we wish we taken in a different direction.