Page 743 - Total War on PTSD

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. ”- Henry David Thoreau
Courtenay: When I think about ‘paying the price’ I think about thing I have done through the years, including my time in the service. I don’t view my service as lost time or ‘lost life’...rather I see it as life enriched. I had so many rich experiences with so many different people that I wouldn’t trade that for the world. This even includes my service in Afghanistan.
I recall serving on board the USS BLUE RIDGE (LCC-19) for an exercise and eating in the CPO mess on a regular basis. Well, a fellow female Chief and I decided to conduct a social experiment based on perceived segregation at the dining tables in the mess. We proceeded to purposefully sit at a different table every single meal, regardless of who was sitting there...whether they would speak to us or not.
We got mixed results from the experiment...some of the ethnically diverse groups responded positively...some completely ignored us...and some got up and left like we had the plague. It was ‘totally wrong’ but we, or at least I, throughly enjoyed messing with the mess!
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