Lt. David Carey Uncovering Our Own Capacity To Get Through Anything

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1:05I'm picking my kids up from school today and then doing our weekly routine, which is I take them over to Whole Foods. We get all our groceries for the week. Then we have dinner. It's one of their favorite things to do. It's one of my favorite things to do. And then my wife loves it because she doesn't have to take care of it. This holiday season, whether you're a guest or hosting the big dinner Whole Foods Market has what you need to delight everyone at your table. They even have heat and eat sides from the prepared foods department. You can make Whole Foods, your one-stop shop. Everything follows Whole Foods Market's strict ingredients standards so you know it'll be delicious and good for you.

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1:51Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down. Be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

2:46Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast. This episode is part two of my interview with Captain Dave Carey, a POW in Vietnam. He served on the same ship, took off from the same ship, was shot down in the same plane as Admiral James Stockdale, who we've talked about many times before. And we just had a beautiful chat out here at the Painted Porch. He lives in Georgetown. We had a beautiful chat about his experiences, about testing these stoic ideas in the laboratory of human experience. I was just so struck by the scene. He talks about getting a knock on the wall and sort of getting past the message.

3:25Hey, remember, Stockdale says, you know, remember what Epictetus said. You know, just the idea, Stockdale, just assuming that all his fellow prisoners were equally briefed on philosophy. I just found that to be both hilarious and beautiful. And Dave and I had a great conversation. It was truly an honor to talk with him. and I think you're really going to like this. He said something I've been thinking a lot about actually ever since. He said, when you're having a conversation, remember the goal is always to get to the next conversation. You don't want to close doors with people. You don't want to close people off.

4:01You don't want to say things that can't be unsaid, which itself is a really important stoic idea. And it's just always good to get that from someone who's, you know, really lived and tested that idea over the course of a long and inspiring and courageous life. We talked about this last week. Captain Dave Carey graduated from the Naval Academy. He was a carrier pilot in Vietnam. He gets shot down. He spends five and a half years there as a POW. He wins five bronze stars, two meritorious service medals, the Purple Heart, eight air medals, and the Navy Commendation Medal. He retired as a captain.

4:38And he's written this great book, The Ways We Choose Lessons for Life from a POWs Experience. I think you're really going to like this interview. And it was so good that I wanted to stretch it out over two spots so it could really sink in. You can grab signed copies of Captain Carey's book at The Painted Porch, or you can go to his website, davecarey.com.

5:09Was it helpful for you also, I imagine, like you're not just getting something out, you're not just giving to the group, or sorry, you're not just getting something out of the group therapy, but you're also helping other people. Do you think having a purpose and a mission in that sense was helpful? Yeah, it was. It most certainly was. I don't, you know, we weren't smart enough. We were just fighter pilots. We weren't smart enough to know much about some of this stuff. But I think we knew, intuitively, we knew that these discussions were good for us and that it was good for us to be candid and honest about what had happened to us, how we felt about it, what we thought about, what our concerns were.

6:01And so, I mean, you know, before I left the States, I have never, up until that, I have never been a fan of counselor shrinks, none of this stuff. You've got to be kidding me. However, I now am a fan of counselors, shrinks, given that they're not working on their own agendas. Sure. But because we were just created to process outside of ourselves. I'm sure we were. Sure. You know, it's either, first of all, if I get it out of my head, either verbally or in writing, it makes me focus on what is going on up here. It's not just a mess. And then it also gives me some distance on it so I can look at it a little more subjectively.

6:52Objectively, yes. Okay. And it was – so we just – we didn't know that all this stuff we're talking about, we didn't know. We just did. You know, this was a situation and this was how we best found our way to deal with it. I mean, I find when I journal, just the getting it from here to here, it's not very far. No. It's a huge difference because now I can be like, that's insane. That's right. Don't tell anyone that. Don't tell anyone that's stupid. Like that's not a good way to treat people or you're not being nice to yourself here or that sounds silly when you stay at Outlaw. And then it's not here, it's here.

7:34But I think also more importantly, it's not there. It's not there. It's not on the person in front of you in traffic. This is safe. This is a safe place. That's a safe place. Just like a counselor should be a safe place. If they're not working their own agenda, it should be a very safe place. Yeah. Yeah. And you guys created a safe place inside a very not safe place. Yes, we did. Uh-huh. It was – I mean, we'd tell each other anything, everything. We did. I mean, even to stuff from our former lives. Sure, sure. I mean, I know we just had our 50th reunion when we were released, and I know lots of names.

8:18I know all the – most of these guys I wouldn't recognize if they walked up and hit me. Sure. But I know their name, and I might know a little bit about them too. Hey, I know what you did there. Yeah. So it's kind of a bond that exists in that group of people that's really pretty remarkable. Yeah, but we cut ourselves off from that because we feel not worthy or we're ashamed or we can't put words to it. Yeah. Yes. And it goes back to it just goes around in circles in our heads. Yeah. Yeah. We're not. Were you angry ever? How did you deal with the anger? I don't recall being angry. Well, I was kind of upset with myself that I pitched this airplane up.

9:04That was stupid. At the time, it seemed brilliant. You know how these ideas are. Sure, sure. If it had worked, it would have been, whoa. But I don't remember being angry. Now, angry. I mean, so you picture groups of men locked up 24-7, 365. 2 ,000 days. Yeah, we had lots of difference of opinions. I mean, we've got different life experience, different worldviews, different upbringing, different everything. And so we'd have some hellacious good arguments, maybe even push each other around a little bit on a rare occasion. but at the end of that, here we are. We're still together. So what do you want to talk about now?

9:58But you didn't feel angry at the things that were done to you, at the people who were doing it to you? Well, at the time, I probably was not very pleased with those people, yes. We didn't like them. I can imagine. And some of them we probably actively hated. But that was, I think in my memory, that was transient. I mean, you know, really, truly, they were just doing their jobs. You know, the guards, if they were told to beat us, they beat us. If they were told to leave us alone, they left us alone. They were just people, I think. Now, some of them we dreaded. Sure. That's probably a better word.

10:52We dreaded.

10:58But, well, at any rate, in my memory, I don't see a lot of hate. I don't feel a lot of hate. That's probably good. I mean, that eats you up. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Hate does terrible things to us, you know. So they just did what they were supposed to do. I tell people, hey, if those guys knew how much money I was making off of that experience, they'd be spinning in their graves. They would just be – Or just the life you went on to lead. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And we used to tell them that too. We didn't tell the interrogators because they were a little more serious. But if the gun guards would come around, we'd tell them.

11:43They didn't understand much. We'd say, you're going to be here. I'm going. Bye-bye. At some point, you get to go back to San Diego. That's right. Which is not Hanoi. And you're stuck here. Right. I remember we got word about the landing on the moon. And the gun guard came around that night. What an incredible contrast. Oh, my goodness. We put somebody on the moon. Are you kidding? And you're in a 19th century prison. Yeah, that's exactly right. We're in a 19th century prison. The gun guard comes by and the moon was up there. He didn't speak English. We didn't speak Vietnamese. That's it. Moon, see moon.

12:23Ours.

12:27I have no idea what he might have understood. Sure. But we were. Although maybe you could have said it in French. I could have said it in French, yeah. Well, the gun guards didn't speak French. Some of the interrogators spoke some French. Yeah. What about anger afterwards? I think about this with Stockdale. It's something I've been trying to wrap my head around. Stockdale is in the Gulf during the Gulf of Tonkin incident. He would reflect later. Again, how much of this is memory afterwards? But he would reflect like, hey, I was there and I don't know what they saw, but I didn't see anything. And so I just wonder how, in some ways, it makes the whole experience more incredible because talk about having, he's having to maintain the faith in something that he has very real reason to doubt and question.

13:25But as you came home or the longer you were spent there, did you feel anger or resentment that you were sent there in the first place that you had to undergo what you went through? No. No. Hey, I wanted to fly jet airplanes off an aircraft carrier. And I didn't care where or how. I wasn't a philosopher. I didn't care where or how. I figured somebody back there knows what they're doing. You were just doing your job. We get to fly an airplane off a carrier. So now you could probably imagine the war became a huge topic of discussion. I mean we would talk about that every which way from Sunday and then start all over again and do the – we were – And we had guys with us who had like geopolitical education or some history or something.

14:25And so, oh, we didn't know that. Yeah, sure. But I don't – I think we had to think and maybe we didn't know any better to think otherwise. Sure. That somewhere in Washington or in the Puzzle Palace, somebody knew and was on the right track. So I'll tell you something else. So I have been this close to communism. Yeah. Right up front, in my face, I've seen it. The true believers. The true believers. I've watched how they treat those people. You know, at night when it would get quiet in some of the prison camps, when it would get quiet, you could hear the loud speakers over the wall in the village.

15:19And so they'd get real quiet and we'd be getting ready to go to sleep and you'd hear over the walls the speakers going and they'd have the war going on those speakers. And I find that big explosion. Man, the next morning when that turnkey opened the door, he was mad as hell. Oh, he was just lit up. And that night, they'd play just music over there. Next morning, the turnkey would open the door. I mean, they turned those people on and off like they had switches in them. Wow. And it was absolutely remarkable. There is no – not a shadow of a dot in my mind that I will never live that way. Of course.

16:11I'll take my guns and go into the mountains. Yeah. I'm never going to live that way. Sure. You know, this whole idea of socialism or communism, it doesn't work. I mean, it's proven to not work. Sure, sure. Somebody's going to be in charge. And so there's always somebody. It's just – so, you know, what we have in the United States may not be the best form of government there is, but it's better than anything else that exists. Sure. And so I've watched that happen over there. I've seen – and let me tell you, Ho Chi Minh wasn't sleeping on a rock. Right. He wasn't eating a handful of rice. Right.

16:53So it's just another way of taking advantage of people or controlling people, I think. We had lots of – they gave us books. Yeah. So in this last period of time, occasionally we would get a book. Yeah. Okay. One time we got a Bible. They came in and gave us a Bible. That must have been beautiful. Look at this. Yeah. And there were about nine of us maybe in that cell at that time. And so we decided we would all start reading at a different point and we would hot box the Bible 24 hours, 24-7. And so that's what we did because we knew it would go away. And now if you picture that, if you were assigned to start reading in Leviticus or somewhere and somebody wakes you up at 2 o 'clock in the morning and says it's your turn.

17:44Yeah. And you're going to read all the bigats like, oh, my God. But so we had it for a few days and then it went away. And by that time between us, we had covered the whole thing. They gave us some books on communism. Yeah. Written by mostly the Russian. You know, the Vietnamese and the Chinese aren't happy campers because the Chinese over the history of all this have overrun Vietnam several times. That's why they were allied with the Russians. That's why they were Russian MiGs. That's why they were Russian Sams. That's right. But they gave us some books written by the communists. I mean, they don't write anything else.

18:24And so in the volume of Vietnamese Studies, I forget which volume it is, but there's several volumes of Vietnamese Studies. When you get to the volume about World War II, it talks about why World War II ended. Now, you thought it was because we nuked the Japanese. That's not why it ended. It ended because of the valiant victory won by the people's liberation forces of Vietnam in some little gun battle somewhere. Sure. They just make up their own history. Sure, sure. Well, you know, that philosophy, in that philosophy, communism, the end justifies the means. Sure. So if the end is always the utopian communist state, it justifies any means to get there.

19:17And so what we see when we look around the world is lots of means.

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22:11It was funny when I spoke at the Naval Academy. I mean, I was talking about sort of some of the recent book bannings and some of the fears about different ideas. And I was telling the story that Stockdale is there. He's being interrogated and they start to sort of give him all this propaganda. And he starts to debate with them and talk with them because when he was at Stanford, he'd read Marx in the original. And he knew the works better than his interrogators. And there is this idea of sort of, well, certain ideas are bad, certain ideas are controversial, certain ideas are scary, so we push them away.

22:48But I think he's such a fascinating example of, well, I'll engage with the material, I won't let it change or affect me, but I'm going to know what the enemy thinks. That's right. Yeah. So who else did you find while you were there was a leader or a resource that sort of shaped and inspired you? I imagine McCain is there at the same time. Bud Day is there at the same time. I was there. McCain was shot down out of my squadron about a month after I was or two months after I was. I only lived with him in the same cell one time for about six weeks. But he had also been one of my instructors in flight training.

23:32So I kind of knew John. He's a great guy. I didn't agree with everything he thinks, but he was a great, great guy. Absolutely great guy. Tough as nails. He was there. Bud, I only lived with Bud for about six weeks one time. The guys that I lived with, we were all JOs, which was a good thing to be then. It was a JO. It was not good to be senior. It was good to be just a JO. Less responsibility on your shoulders. Oh, yeah, yeah. And the Vietnamese, I mean, they looked at their own JOs. Sure. He doesn't know anything. They're dummies. They don't know anything. We can go get the senior guys. Sure, sure.

24:20So I remember one time I told the interrogator that he wanted to know something, and I said, look, I don't know. He said, you tell me. I said, you understand. I'm a junior officer. I don't know anything. If you want to know that, you've got to go get a senior guy. Yeah. So you can't imagine how bad I felt when I came back to my cell. I had to tap on the wall. Oh, by the way, I told him to go get a senior guy. Oh, gee. I told him you know the answer. Yeah, I told him you know. That wasn't a good move, but, you know. But that's the burden of command is that the buck stops with you. It comes with privileges and responsibilities.

25:05Yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah, I heard someone say that there's that acronym rank has its privileges, but it's actually rank has its responsibilities. Yes, it does. It most certainly does, yeah. I mean, obviously, famously with McCain, he could have gotten some special treatment, right? There was an opportunity to leave sooner. Yeah. Well, you remember the little clip they played of him laying in the hospital bed, all casted up and everything when he was running for president? You know, they came in one day and they told him, you're going home. Yeah. We got a delegation. We're giving him. They figured out who his father was.

25:46And he said, no, I'm not. Yeah. Now, I always – that just tickles me because they literally picked him up. He had this much control over what was going to happen to you. Sure. Zero. Sure. They could have just carried him out the door. But instead, of course, they got all upset with him because he's saying no and threw him back in with the rest of us. Yeah. He was an interesting guy. I imagine that is one of those decisions that in the moment you feel one way, but then you have to deal with the consequences of said decision subsequently. And that's where it hurts. That's where it hurts. Well, they yanked him out of the hospital and took him back over and threw him into a cell in Wallow.

26:31And they didn't care if the cask broke or didn't break or, you know. So he healed a mess, of course. Well, that's what I meant about anger. when he goes to lift his arm for the rest of his life and it can't raise, it doesn't seem unnatural to me that one might be a little angry about that. But that anger eats you up. Yeah. You just can't let things like that fester.

27:04So he – I don't know specifically how John dealt with it, But I know it was not a festering kind of anger, resentment. I don't know. Does going through what you went through, I would be curious, does it turn down the volume on pretty much everything else for the rest of your life? You're like, I was in a Vietnamese prison. This line at the DMV is the line at the DMV. I'll get through it. Yeah. Yeah. It puts things in perspective. It does. Now, I don't say that to my wife. I say, sweetheart, I understand you're really upset. It does sound like a huge deal. Yes. But I think, so my first wife died from breast cancer and then I remarried.

27:53And I think either of those women would tell you that not much bothers me. I don't get too worked up about, I don't get worked up about stuff. So it's just – things are in a different perspective. Does it turn down the volume on the good stuff too? I don't think so. Well, most of it looks like good stuff to me. That's true. I mean, you know, the truth is I can stand up and walk out that door. At least you're not in a 19th century prison. This is all right. Sure. Yeah. So I think our – I hate to speak for all these guys, but of course I will. That doesn't slow me down. I think that our appreciation of what we have and what we enjoy and the way we're able to live in this country is just very enhanced by that experience.

28:51And we know that no matter how bad things get, well, I mean, I'm going to die someday. I may get very sick someday. We're all going to die someday. but that's of no concern to me. Remember what Epictetus said. Yeah, remember what Epictetus said. Don't be concerned about that. You got no control over it. So Seneca is one of the other stoics. He said that he pitied people who had never been through adversity because they didn't know what they were capable of. They hadn't been tested. But I've heard you say that one of the things you took out of your experience is that just because you haven't been tested doesn't mean, just because the average person hasn't been tested doesn't mean they're not capable of incredible things.

29:37That's right. That what you took out of it is that each of us has a sort of a reservoir of adversity or a fortitude and resilience inside of us. Yes. So let's go back to the subject of PTSD. Yeah. Which I never, however we got around that, I never got to it.

29:58I'm going to tell you so I'm at a bar I don't always hang out at bars but I'm at a bar and I'm having a drink and there's a couple sitting next to us my wife's with me and we're waiting to go to dinner and we start chatting and she's a shrink and that's not a good word to use she's a shrink and she's working with soldiers from Fort Hood and PTSD around the, in the area of PTSD. And she, oh, okay. So she says, what do you think? What's your experience? She finds out. Yeah. Sandy probably said, well, Dave was POW and he didn't seem to have any PTSD. And she finds, so she says, what do you think?

30:46So I told her what I thought, which wasn't, which I'm going to tell you. But I alienated one shrink when I told you. So here's what I think about PTSD. I think this country, we as a culture, as a nation, are doing, have done, and are doing a horrendous disservice to our service people.

31:12Because we, in many ways, some of them very overt, and some of them very sneaky or under the radar, we tell them, we give them the message that if they go where they're going and have to do what they're going to have to do, that they're going to be screwed up. Yeah. And they are. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. And then not only that, we have built a whole industry around this. And so we give them the wrong message and they come back. Now, I'm not denying that some people, I mean, but if you look at WW2, for example, yes, we had people come home shell-shocked. But if you look at the vast majority of service people who came home from WW2, they just hitched up their britches and got on with it.

32:14But perhaps that's because they had something similar to that support group that you were talking about, which is that it was a shared experience. It was a shared experience. They were on a boat coming home, so they had time to process. I see all those things as certainly contributing to it. But I think we have done – we've really done a disservice to members of our armed forces. The message should be – and this is the message I – when I speak, this is the message, which is you are way tougher, way stronger, way more resilient, way more creative, way more flexible than you ever imagined. You just haven't been tested.

32:56But you are. And you see, I think that's a message we should be telling our troops. I think that's a message that should be told at the Naval Academy. They should be being told no matter what happens, you can deal with it. You'll get through it. You may die. I mean, it may be really bad and you may die. Well, then you don't have to worry about it anymore. But in the interim, you can deal with whatever life or the service or combat or whatever throws at you. then they have a much higher propensity, ability, potential to do that. But if we tell them, hey, you're going to go, this is going to be asymmetrical warfare.

33:41You're going to not know who they are. You're going to get all screwed up. You're going to be a mess. They come home a mess. Well, and I imagine your message also includes you have the capacity and the strength and the resources and the support system to deal with trauma or pain or memories, that is included. It's not just you're going to be so tough, nothing will touch you. No. It's that you have the ability to come back from this and it might take a long time. It might be hard. It might be years of therapy. You might need medication, but you'll get through it. You'll get through it. Yes. Yeah.

34:22Yes. Yes. It's really, you know who the JPRA is? Joint Personnel Rescue Agency? Yeah. So that's a group within DOD whose charge is to bring, to help bring people back from very difficult situations, hostage situations. Sure. POW, they're trying to be ready for, they've invited me to come talk to them in August. That's what I'm going to tell them. I'm going to tell them, you guys, don't keep telling these people they're going to be screwed up. tell them if they are if they have problems you got resources for them you'll be able to take care of them but that's something i thought about with the pandemic because i've got two little kids and you know the first year parents were talking about it like the law they called it the lost year they would talk about how behind kids were going to be in school how scarring it was going to be and i i remember saying like when i talked to my grandparents who lived in the depression or World War II.

35:30They went through this. They never spoke about that thing as, of course, it was not an experience they chose or would have wanted to do again. But like all the things in our lives, when we think about breakups or accidents or injuries, it gets integrated into who we are. And we think about it as a thing, like Stockdale said, that in retrospect, we wouldn't trade away, right? We have the ability to turn it in, to find meaning in it, to learn from it, to grow from it. And with enough distance, inevitably, we always see what's happened to us as the best thing that could have ever happened. But we tell ourselves in the moment, this is the worst thing that ever happened to me.

36:10Things will never be the same again. This is so unfair. And that's not fair. Like, why not give ourselves the gift of what we're going to feel about it in the future right now? And if the people that are supposed to be helping us talk that way or give us that impression, it just multiplies the challenge. I remember I was a kid. I got in this really terrible bike accident. The front wheel of my bike just fell off. And I went over the handlebars. I took the entire blow with one side of my face. My lips were kind of my braces. I broke my eyesight. It was terrible. But I woke – you know, I got up and I thought I was okay.

36:47You know, I was like – obviously, I got hurt. But, you know, the body goes into shock. You're good at protecting yourself. And my younger sister, she was maybe like 10 or 11, might go inside. I think I need to go to the doctor. My sister runs and she goes and gets a handheld mirror from the bathroom. She goes, look at your face. And that's the second that it started to hurt excruciatingly bad. When someone tells you, oh, my God, you've been so wronged. you'll never be the same again, you're broken, it compounds already bad situation. Already bad situation. Yeah. It does not help. Yeah. So at any rate, those are my opinions on it, and I'm happy to have had the opportunity to say that.

37:34No, I think it makes sense. And you're not saying just rub some dirt on it, you'll be okay. No. You're saying that you have within you the capacity to get through this. Get through whatever.

37:51You probably heard the headlines about all the different cuts to foreign aid and food benefits. This is having a profound impact on the world's poorest people and the world's poorest communities. But, you know, just hearing about that, that's not what stoicism is about. Stoicism is, to me, what you're going to do about it. And that's where GiveWell comes in. GiveWell is trusted by tens of thousands of donors each year because they provide free and independent research that helps you understand how to have a big impact. GiveWell has spent the last 18 years researching global health and poverty alleviation, and they direct funding to the highest impact opportunities.

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39:56There's a Marcus Aurelius quote, and he says, you're like a soldier storming a wall. He says, if you've fallen and you have to ask a comrade for help, so what? And I think that is an important part. It goes to the stories you're telling, which is also, though, that there is a certain amount of courage and strength required to say, I'm not okay. I feel guilty. I messed up. I'm struggling. That's also not what stoicism or strength is, stuffing it down and doing it all yourself if you don't have to. You don't have to. That's right. And in our culture, you don't have to. I mean, we have resources that are available, particularly if we think about our armed forces coming back from whatever they've been involved in.

40:48Sure. We just need to give the right messages to them. When also that, as Stockdale pulls, like the ancients had been through stuff like this before, right? And they wrote about it. And we should avail ourselves of that wisdom instead of – he obviously figured and you did too. You all figured out a bunch of stuff on your own while you're in there, but you're also drawing from the Bible, from philosophers, from the notes that you're getting from friends and family. You're drawing on other people's wisdom and experiences, too, and each other. There's nothing new under the sun. That says that in the Bible, doesn't it?

41:24It certainly says that in the Bible. We're people. That's why the Bible has such applicability. It's about people, and we're people. Yes. And people, unfortunately, don't change. Or fortunately, depending on – we're just people. Well, in your experience, as new as it was, you're shot out of a fighter plane by a surface-to-air missile and rescued by a parachute. You find out you're not going to be rescued by radio. All that's very new. But in another sense, yours is the oldest story in all of human experience. The warrior separated from the tribe or the group and forced to fend for themselves against the elements and the enemy and then has to reintegrate into society.

42:16That's a very timeless story. It is a timeless story. I'm curious about the title of your book. Why is it called The Ways We Choose? What do you mean? So when I started, I'll tell you how that came about. So when I started speaking, I started speaking because some friends encouraged me to. And, you know, I go to rotary clubs and one rotary club leads to another. And they don't care what you talk about as long as they're out of there at 1.30. You can talk about anything you want. They got to be out of there at 1.30. And I remember when the first time I was offered money to speak, I remember sitting down with Karen, my first wife.

42:52We're across the table just like this. And I said something like, sweetheart, if I'm going to do this for money, and I had people encouraging me to do that. I've got to figure out what's worth talking about because I don't want to just tell stories. Sure. You're a good storyteller though. Well, thank you. I've had a lot of practice. There's got to be something out of this experience that's transferable. And so that led then to when I talk, what I tell people, just pretend I get there in a good way. I say the question I most frequently ask about my experience is, how do you do that? Yeah. How could you do that?

43:34And in my mind, the answer to that question is very simple. We did what we had to do. We did our best. We chose to grow through that experience. We kept our sense of humor. We kept the faith. Faith in ourselves, faith in each other, faith in our country, faith in God. Sure. And I see those things as directly translatable into your lives. Of course. And so then I keep telling the story and I go through that framework and I keep hooking back into what I know is going on either in life or if it's a business. I've already talked to people. I know what their problems are. I know. Sure. And I just keep hooking it back in.

44:13And when I get done, at some point I then say, hey, and oh, by the way, those are all matter of choice. Sure. This is a matter of choice. The question would be better if I ask it like this. How do you choose to deal with your problems? How do you choose to get yourself through your situation? How do you choose to deal with the pressure in your life? How do you choose? because doing what you have to do, do your best, keep your sense of humor, grow, keep the faith. Those are all choices that we make. Now, what happens to us in our lives may well be beyond our control and often are. As much as we'd like to control it, we can't.

44:57But how we deal with it, the ways we choose to deal with these things are always within our control. So that's why the title is the title the way it is. Well, maybe this quote came to you through the walls one day, but one of Stockdale's favorite Epictetus quotes, and I'm going to butcher it a little bit, but he says, a podium in a prison is each a place, Epictetus said. I mean, he knew this. He was a slave himself. He said, a podium in a prison is each a place. In that place, we still maintain a certain freedom of choice. President versus a prisoner has different choices, has different stimulus, different temptations, different options.

45:40But nevertheless, there always remain choices that cannot be taken away from us. We don't control what happens basically, but we control how we respond. How we respond. Yeah. And that's the reason for the title. And that's the way I talk. I mean, And that's – I'm not a writer. I'm a speaker sort of. And I just blew up this – what I say in 45 minutes or an hour to that. Do you feel a certain kinship with people who have been through similar experiences? I was just thinking Dr. Edith Eager who also lives in San Diego. She's in her 90s now. But she's a Holocaust survivor. She wrote this beautiful book called The Choice.

46:28which basically comes down to a very similar thing. When everything else is reduced, we have some small choice about story we tell ourselves. Are we going to be corrupted by this? Are we going to be broken by this? Are we going to let them strip our humanity from us or not? Have you felt over the years, I'm sure you've met all different sorts of people who've been through harrowing things. Do you guys all kind of understand each other at a certain level, having been tested in a similar way or no?

47:02I'm trying to think of specific incidents if I can think of. I've been speaking for 30 years. All kinds of people come talk to me. And one of the things that stands out is they all agree. That it's a choice. They agree that these things are a choice. Do what you have to do. Do your best. keep your sense of humor, grow, keep the faith. I've never had anybody who was anything but totally agreeable with what I had said. Sure. They've never heard it in a story like that with examples like that. Sure. But they agree with that. And I've had a few. I'm trying to think of one or two. I know I've had a few experiences where somebody will want to talk to me about something that's happened in their life.

48:00And either how they tried to deal with it or how what happened to them corresponds with what I was saying or something like that. Sure. I've had a lot – if I had$5 for everybody who said to me, you know, my dad, my uncle, my nephew, my father was in Vietnam. They don't talk about it at all. I'd be rich. It seems to me from casual observation that the human tendency is to just squish things down. The wrong kind of stoicism. Yes. It's the wrong kind of approach to it. It's rather than get it out, you know. So I don't know if that answers your question. No, no, it does. It definitely does. Yeah, it ultimately does come down to a choice or not a choice, but that's also a choice.

48:59That's a choice. To not respond is a choice, to lay there and let it do its work on you is a choice. Yeah, yeah. I think what is interesting about all your experiences, all of you, is that you are doing, I think there's a subtitle of one of Stockdale's books where it's like, Testing Epictetus' Ideas in the Laboratory of Human Experience, something like that. It's that there are these abstract ideas, whether it's the training manual or the code or what you learn at the Naval Academy. And then there is the messiness of real life. And we do have a sense that certain ideas, certain approaches, the five questions you're sort of bringing up, these have been validated not just in your experience, but going back 5 ,000 years and probably going 5 ,000 years in the future.

49:56this is just when you reduce it down to its very essence that's what it is it's pretty simple I think when I say to people okay how are you going to deal with your problems how are you going to deal with the conflict in your life how are you going to deal with the pressure how will you deal with the tragedies how are you going to do that there is not much answer except I'm going to have to make choices as I go through this. Right. It's like someone can give you this whole catalog of how it happened, why it happened, whose fault it is, how messed up it is, how much it's going to cost them. And then it still doesn't change the fact that you're going to have to answer.

50:41You've got to do it. It's yours to deal with. Yes. It's not your fault, but it's your responsibility, I've heard someone say. That's right. It may not be your fault at all. Yes. Here you are. So, you know, yeah. Did you ever read Viktor Frankl? Oh, yes. Yeah. When he talks, I've read Man's Search for Meaning, which I completely agree with. You know, it is a meaning in our life. We have to have a meaning in our life. Now, I personally believe that meaning is Jesus Christ because I don't see anything else that comes close to being the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Everything changes. But when I first read that, almost right after we came home, I forget somebody handed it to me and I read it and I thought, yeah, he's right.

51:39You know, you got to have some meaning here or else it's just you're adrift. And you got to find specifically meaning in the not so fun stuff. Yeah. Because it's easy to find the meaning in your kids or your job or a beautiful sunset. Yeah, it is. Yeah. But it's when the going gets rough. Yeah. You need, there's got to be some foundation there. It's like you're familiar with scripture. So you either build your house on the foundation or on the sand. And the sand will shift. So you have to have some basic identity, meaning. Yeah. And speaking of questions, I think the thing I took most from his work is he says something like, we ask what is the meaning of life?

52:29And then we expect an answer. And he says, actually, life is asking you that question. Yeah. And your choices, your actions are the answer. Are the answer. Yeah. I like that. Who said that? Viktor Frankl. Oh, did he? Yes. Okay. Okay. Like you go through something like what he went through and you go, what was the meaning of all of this? Doesn't this show that humans are awful and nothing means anything? And he's saying, no, by what I do after, by who I become out of this, the good that I do, the people that I help, that I don't let it break me or make me give up. That's the retort. That's the retort.

53:08Yeah. Yeah. Good. My last question for you, you were talking about speaking and we said how nothing is new under the sun. Do you find as, I do a lot of speaking too, every group thinks that they're special and unique and their business has this unique set of problems and they go, I need a special talk. And then you just do your regular talk and they go, that's exactly what we need. Exactly what we need. Oh, yeah. That's, you know, they're people. Yes. None of the problems are new. They just, in this case, it's in the widget industry. And in this case, it's ballet dancers. And in this case, it's fighter pilots.

53:45But you all have the same problems. They all have the same issues. The same problems. You know, so we, yeah. Oh, yes. Absolutely. I just keep saying the same thing. Yes. It's funny as I, so I wrote this book, The Daily Stoic. and it's one page of Stoic philosophy every day, right? And this is a quote from the Stoics at the top. And what I get, I got this from a text from someone yesterday. They just put out this movie and it's coming out. And they were like, your quote is about my movie, like that day. And they're like, how did you know? And it's like, well, I wrote it eight years ago, so I didn't know.

54:17But that's who we find what we need to find in the moment. We hear what we need to hear. Yeah, yeah. I imagine there were days you picked up that Bible. It was your section. And you were like, how did they know? How did they know? And was it totally random and yet not random at the same time? That's right. Well, that's why it's called the living word. It's not called the living word because it's living. It's called because you're different every time you read. Yes. And so you see different things. Have you heard the quote, no man steps in the same river twice? Right. The Bible is the same. It's the same.

54:56But who you are in that moment is different. It's different. Yeah. And so you get different insight from it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I read it all the time. I think, oh, I never saw that before. Even though you saw it a thousand times. Even though I've seen it. Yeah. I find that with the Stoics. I've gone through, I have my same copy that I go through over and over again. And it's like, I know I read this passage because there's my handwriting right next to it. And I not only didn't get it, I got the opposite of what it meant. Yeah. Or it can mean two things. Yeah. And maybe that's even, we were talking about the Stockdale paradox.

55:27It's like what you need. The whole point is by making it a little vague, a little contradictory, a little. I think that's why Jesus spoke in parables. Oh, yeah. Is so you can hear what you need to hear in that moment. And so you'd remember something. Because if he just gave the dissertation. Yes. We would never remember anything. Why are you lecturing me? Yeah. It's all about stories. Yeah, we remember the stories. Yeah. Well, your stories have been amazing and I so appreciate you taking the time. Oh, it's been my pleasure. I'm honored and tickled to have had the opportunity to talk. Thank you very much.

56:11Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. I'll see you next episode.

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