The Central Plateau in NZ is a beautiful place. Most people think of Mt Ruapehu and snow trips, Lake Taupo and their lake side family holiday’s or school camping trips. For me, most of my memories of the area come from my time in the Army.
It comes with mixed emotions, most of my memories are somewhere between exciting, embarrassing, harrowing and sometimes downright demeaning. Truthfully, I was too young and immature, and unfortunately it really showed.
Every time we travel through the Desert Rd I point out to my children ‘The Knoll’. My wife has been hearing this story for the last 18 years and my children are getting equally tired of it. But like any good story teller, I persist, waking people in the car if needed, because The Knoll is full of life lessons.
It’s quite a simple story really, The Knoll is where I nearly failed officer cadet school. It was the moment my leadership was tested in the field and found sorely lacking. I was leading a platoon of 30 people, we were advancing, and the enemy opened fire on us from The Knoll. My 30 soldiers were nearly decimated by, it turned out, 2 enemy combatants. I fought bravely though, I mean I did help the enemy by personally ordering 10 of my sldliers to run right through the covering fire I also provided. The 90 minute battle, which should have been a walk in park, was a battle of attrition which we barely won. Just to be clear, this was a training exercise, we’re firing blanks and my ineptitude was only fake killing people.
But my immaturity showed up before we were fired upon. A section commander requested we break for food and water. We’d been marching all day with heavy packs in hot weather, and we’d already undergone two assaults. The team felt hungry, thirsty and tired, so I responded like any leader who feels insecure, “no”.
I’ve reflected on this moment many times and learned a lot from it. One key lesson it’s taught me is to understand the impact of emotions on people. It’s helped me see that how people feel is as much a part of them as their skills, abilities and personalities.
Yet we treat emotions very differently don’t we? We’re a lot less forgiving towards them, or at least understanding of them. They’re messy. They change when we don’t want them to. They impact us deeply without warning. We assume they get in the way and let us down. When I want to capture them in English and explain them, they seem elusive and slippery.
So if emotions are so much work and challenging, it begs the question, what good are they, or better yet, why do we have them? Without unpacking all of the neuroscientific or philosophical answers to that, at a practical level I find the simplest answer is to simply explain that, emotions move us. And they should.
My platoon at the time were tired, thirsty and in need of a little rest. These emotions caused them to request a break, to pause so they could drink and grab a snack. I felt insecure and a need to prove myself, so I denied the request. Both of us had emotions, and both of us were moved by them.
In fact, the etymology (origin) of the word emotion is from a Latin combination of words which means ‘out’, or ‘from within’ and ‘move’. Emotion literally comes from within and creates movement.
When I feel thirsty, I should seek out water. When I feel tired, I should be moved to go to bed. When I break my arm, the pain helps me remember to use it sensitively while it heals. When I feel happy because I’m with my friends, I should be moved to do it again.
When my friend loses a family member, I should be moved to find out how they’re doing. When I feel love, I should be moved towards intimacy. When I feel appropriately scared, I should be moved towards safety. When I see things in the world that make me sad, frustrated, even angry, I should be moved to engage and do something about them. This is why we have emotions, because they move us.
But does this give us license to allowing every emotion we have to move us wherever it leads? 5 minutes with a toddler, a pen and a freshly painted white wall will tell you that’s probably not wise. There is a maturity that we can develop around our emotions, and we’ll expand on that in the next thought.