PERSON OF THE YEAR

It made me happy when I saw that on the cover of Time Magazine that the U.S. soldier had been chosen as the Person of the Year. It seems like the staff who decides these things at Time had pencilled in a vote in the "Good" column for the tally of "Good VS Evil". That is always heartening to me; probably to a lot of folks.

Having been a soldier—I believe, "once a soldier always a soldier"—I know what it feels like. Between the many hours and days and weeks experiencing other emotions, being a soldier is an especially proud thing. There are those quiet moments when a soldier just knows he is doing the best possible thing he or she can be doing.

When you are soldiering, and doing your best, there is nothing else that can compare because you are giving totally, unselfishly, everything you have. It’s not something you even have to think about—which is why it is such a selfless act. Being a soldier means you that although you are playing just one person’s role; your small part is crucial to the success of the bigger mission and effects the greater good. So much is beyond your individual control—almost everything, in fact—that you learn to act almost without thinking, purely instinctively, spontaneously. You have had so much intense training that soldiering becomes ingrained in your very being—which is why, "once a soldier, always a soldier.

In a real sense, this way of acting is very "Buddhist"—an enlightened way of acting and being. I remember attending a weeklong series of lectures by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (who comes from a Hindu not a Buddhist tradition) at MIT shortly after I’d returned from Vietnam and left the service. He had a couple of Army Generals on the stage with him, which was causing a lot of consternation in the press—especially with the alternative newspapers. I was feeling so proud in my heart seeing the Generals up there and yet I was secretly hiding the fact that I was a Vietnam Veteran. In Cambridge in 1970, it was not a very popular thing to be.

One afternoon, a woman reporter approached the audience microphone in the aisle to ask Maharishi how he could possibly have these "warmongers, these baby killers" up on the stage beside him. A hush fell over the audience of a thousand or so people—people who had come to learn more of Maharishi’s method of finding inner peace.

I think we all expected Maharishi to say something other than what he said. I will never forget his words when he began responding quietly to the reporter’s barbed question. "There is no higher goal a man can aspire to than to be a soldier."

There was a collective gasp in the hall. Maharishi had gone far beyond merely defending the role of a soldier. For me, he had defined exactly what I knew in my heart to be true but had never formulated as a thought. I tried to hide the tears that welled up in my eyes. My two years in the Army and my year in Vietnam had now suddenly been transformed in my mind from something I had felt ashamed about to something I could feel proud of.

The conscience of our country—sometimes reflected by our journalists—in its better moments, recognizes just what Maharishi voiced as the truth. We need a symbol for what we are feeling so we find someone to turn into a hero. The editors at Time, having tuned into the collective heart of our nation, are merely reflecting what is, I believe, in most people’s hearts.

It is always a proud moment for our country when we recognize selflessness in any form. This is a victory of the human spirit.