The Navy Seal: Glen Doherty

I fall down a lot when I jog. I have mentioned this before. Sometimes I do it because I am a klutz. Other times I do it because I forget I am supposed to be paying attention to the uneven Brooklyn sidewalk under my feet.

This morning my toe catches and I tumble.

I stopped focusing on running.

Because this morning I hear, “The day following yesterday is always the hardest,” a Navy Seal named Glen Doherty said this. I call him a Navy Seal because I assume once a Seal always a Seal.

Glen died in Libya. It is said that he died a hero and saved hundreds of people.

Someone said in his past he was a skier looking to go pro. Someone said he was a surfer who surfed the big waves.

I say he is dead defending the defenseless and it makes me wonder if Glen Doherty knew he was going to die would he have been so heroic. Or would he run from the blackness.

It seems his entire life he was running towards it.

What makes these men these men?

Am I one of them? Would I know?

Are you? Would you know?

I saw a video of a skier jump from a helicopter and race an avalanche, he died.

Was he one?

I watched another video were a man dove out of a plane. He pulled his rip cord and only half the actions necessary for his parachute to function happened. On the video the wind is louder than his screams. He hits a cluster of cypress bushes and lives. Come to think about it he was probably a women.

It doesn’t matter.

Was she one?

I watched another video where a man and a woman have sex while diving from a plane.

Were they searching for the blackness?

Are any of those actions indications of heroism? Of searching for the darkness. Facing the unknown. Going nose to nose with everything and anything.

There aren't many who can compare to Glen Doherty, who also said, “Just go! Deal with the bumps later.”

That’s triple black diamond shit right there.

That’s climb to the top of K2.

That’s life one minute at a time.

Today is always the hardest. You cannot prepare for what has yet to come.

Once you live through it its too late, lived never again, except by memory, no point in regretting the hardest day when you are dealing with a new one right now.

I like to think that if Glen woke up again on the morning he died, the morning of September 11th 2012, knowing what is to come, he would try just as hard to save the lives he saved.

His life was forfeit from the moment he first took breath into his lungs at birth, from that moment he was going to save 200 people from a terrorist attack in Libya.

He was born so those he would kill he would kill and save those he would save.

He helped rescue Jessica Lynch.

He sniped pirates in the Indian Ocean.

He lost a U.S. ambassador and a fellow former Navy Seal on the day he died, and I know if he could he would do it again just so he could try and save them he would do it again.

Hit the retry button.

Tomorrow I will think about Glen and try to lift my feet a bit higher, I will try and face the blackness of tomorrow by knowing the bumps are part of the ride and the hard part is almost over I just have to live it.