The Basics of Life

Being in an environment where you don’t have all the comforts of home you start to realize what you need to survive and the excesses that you lived with believing that they were necessities. In a song by Donavon Frankenreiter there is a line that goes:
“Try to sell something that just can’t be bought, say that it’s the latest and greatest but I know that it’s not, be somebody that you don’t want to be, didn’t even exist last year but now it’s what we need.”
It holds very true that there are a lot of things that society deems necessities that aren’t really needed. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to go home and sell all my things and live on the basics, I enjoy my lifestyle more than anyone and with my new salary I won’t have to worry about not having things I want.

But, believe it or not, I didn’t take this job for the money. It was for the learning experience and in the 3 weeks I’ve been here I’ve learned more about me than my entire 28 years has allowed. I’ve learned that all I really need to live is good friends, good conversation and good stories, everything else is perspective.

I don’t need the finest food or living arrangements or newest technology. I’m living in a tent with 10 other guys, eating food that’s below the grade given to prisoners in Mexico and I don’t have a television. But from my perspective I’m probably the happiest I’ve been in a while. We share stories over cigars every other night. War stories, stories from home, stories about past relationships, even stories from the day have more color than any shared back home. These people are truly interesting and, more importantly, interested.

Conversations flow like rivers, going from one topic to another seamlessly. We can start on politics and move on to women (we’re all guys) and then somehow we’ll start talking about which showers are the cleanest. I don’t know how it happens, it just does. (From this I realized what I want in a relationship, someone who I can converse with.) Few of us have the same background, or interests, but we get along just like peas in a pod.

We’re free from cell phones, daily news and, for the most part, office politics. We work hard throughout the day and my reward is sharing experiences and ideas with others during the night, which is by far the best reward I could ever ask for… and I had to go to a war zone to get it. It’s been the most enriching experience I’ve had so far in my life and I hope that it will continue.