Yet out of the lands I’ve lived and roles I’ve have donned, none blaze in my memory like the two years I spent as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ. It is a shame that few who review my resume ask about that time; more interesting experiences were packed into those few mission years than in the rest of the lot combined.
To be a missionary is to confront the uncanny. You cannot serve without sounding out the weird bottoms of the human heart. But if missionary life forces you to come full contact with mankind at its most desperate and unsettled, so too it asks you to witness mankind at its most awesome and ethereal. Guilt’s blackest pit, fear’s sharpest grip, rage at its bluntest, hope at its highest, love at its longest and fullest — to serve as a missionary is to be thrust in the midst of the full human panorama, with all of its foulness and all of its glory. I doubt I shall ever experience anything like it again. I cannot value its worth. I learned more of humanity’s crooked timbers in the two years I lived as missionary than in all the years before and all the years since.
Attempting to communicate what missionary life is like to those who have not experienced it themselves is difficult. You’ll notice my opening paragraph restricted itself to broad generalities; it is hard to move past that without cheapening or trivializing the experience.
Yet there is one segment of society that seems to get it. In the years since my service, I have been surprised to find that the one group of people who consistently understands my experience are soldiers. In many ways a Mormon missionary is asked to live something like a soldier: like a soldier, missionaries go through an intense ‘boot camp’ experience meant to reshape their sense of self and duty; are asked to dress and act in a manner that erodes individuality; are ‘deployed’ in far-flung places that leave them isolated from their old friends, family members, and community; are pushed into contact with the full gamut of human personality in their new locales; live within a rigid hierarchy, follow an amazing number of arcane rules and regulations, and hold themselves to insane standards of diligence, discipline, and obedience; and spend years doing a job which is not so much a job as it is an all-encompassing way of life.
The last point is the one most salient to this essay. It is part of the reason both many ex-missionaries (known as “RMs” or “Return Missionaries” in Mormon lingo) and many veterans have such trouble adapting to life when they return to their homes. This comparison occurred to me first several years ago, when I read a Facebook comment left by a man who had served as a Marine mechanic in Afghanistan. He was commenting on an interview Sebstation Junger had done to promote his book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging.
I really enjoyed the audiobook of Tribe, by the way, but audiobooks don’t lend themselves to excerpts.
Many RMs report a sense of loss and aimlessness upon returning to “the real world.” They suddenly find themselves in a society that is disgustingly self-centered, a world where there is nothing to sacrifice or plan for except one’s own advancement. For the past two years there was a purpose behind everything they did, a purpose whose scope far transcended their individual concerns. They had given everything — “heart, might, mind and strength” — to this work, and now they are expected to go back to racking up rewards points on their credit card? How could they?
The soldier understands this question. He understands how strange and wonderful life can be when every decision is imbued with terrible meaning. Things which have no particular valence in the civilian sphere are a matter of life or death for the soldier. Mundane aspects of mundane jobs (say, those of the former vehicle mechanic) take on special meaning. A direct line can be drawn between everything he does — laying out a sandbag, turning off a light, operating a radio — and the ability of his team to accomplish their mission. Choice of food, training, and exercise before combat can make the difference between the life and death of a soldier’s comrades in combat. For good or for ill, it is through small decisions like these that great things come to pass.
In this sense the life of the soldier is not really his own. His decisions ripple. His mistakes multiply. The mission demands strict attention to things that are of no consequence in normal life. So much depends on him, yet so little is for him.
This sounds like a burden. In some ways it is. But in other ways it is a gift. Now, and for as long as he is part of the force, even his smallest actions have a significance he could never otherwise hope for. He does not live a normal life. He lives with power and purpose — that rare power and purpose given only to those whose lives are not their own.
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This sort of life is not restricted to soldiers and missionaries. Terrorists obviously experience a similar sort of commitment. So do dissidents, revolutionaries, reformers, abolitionists, and so forth. What matters here is conviction and cause. If the cause is great enough, and the need for service so pressing, then many of the other things — obedience, discipline, exhaustion, consecration, hierarchy, and separation from ordinary life — soon follow. It is no accident that great transformations in history are sprung from groups of people living in just this way. Humanity is both at its most heroic and its most horrifying when questing for transcendence.
Same goes for healthcare. Physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners. And especially, in my experience, surgeons. Those guys. Wow.
Being either a missionary or a soldier exposes you to the full range of humanity from pure evil to sublime sacrfice. To experience that in a short time must be an intense and shocking experience. The same view can be gained in a more subtle fashion by reading history. It’s safe to say from history humans are a sorry and amazing species.