We’ve seen it coming. The risks, the rewards, the heartache and pain.

We’ve spent countless hours away from loved ones, missing everything from the birth of our children to the last moments of our significant others. We’ve lived through stressors many wouldn’t consider possible and struggled with realities that most of us wish weren’t plausible.

We’ve laughed, we’ve cried, we’ve lived and we’ve died. We are military, and we are changing.

It’s poetic, really, as it was the need for change that brought us here. Whether we wanted a stable job, tuition assistance or just out from under our parents’ roof, it was still for the change. We were missing something. We had to be. Why else would we knowingly contract ourselves to service knowing we would get shot at by the enemies of our nation and ridiculed by those we wish to protect?

Change: We see it before it happens, watch it when it does and complain about the good old days after implementation, but it’s one of the few reliable constants that make our military great.

Don’t like your boss or where you work? It’ll change. Don’t like the job? Apply for a different one and transfer with the same benefits, pay and respect inherent to your rank. Don’t like your pay? We’ve got clear career progression rarely seen in the civilian market.

Don’t like a policy? There are ways to change that, too. Undoubtedly, it creates unprecedented stress. We’re used to it. We thrive off of it. From day one of basic, it’s what we eat, sleep and breathe.

It’s been the key to what’s made us what we are, and what we will always be — brothers and sisters in arms.

Unfortunately, that, too, is subject to change. It’s been discreet. A silent thought in the back of our mind. A cancer. The heritage of self-sacrifice that was once used to help lift each other up is slowly diminishing, and we’re doing it to ourselves. We’re becoming indifferent.

Our fathers and theirs have warned us of its potential, yet every year we heed it less. It’s easy to do when our environment calls for us to do more with less.

The career becomes a job, our brothers and sisters mere co-workers. Those new to the service are left to flounder in an environment of politics and intrigue.

How could this have happened, when we were built on a foundation of camaraderie and trust? Why is it that military instructions meant to empower our leaders and improve morale are overlooked and forgotten? Ambition.

It’s only natural to desire greatness. Success. A full career with meaningful experiences. A chance to look back and say, “I did this.” If we didn’t want to succeed we wouldn’t have felt the need for the change that brought us here, but if we want that success, we need to prove ourselves better than the rest. In that fight for recognition, that spot at the top, the best, we lose sight of fighting for those around us … and, in that, we fail.

Thankfully, there is a simple solution — we need to care about our fellow members the way we used to. No, this is not the lofty idealism of peace advocates, but the pragmatic realism of successful commands. Not a call to decrease ambition, but re-focusing its achievement.

Caring for our fellow members at arms has always been integral to success. We trudge through the mud and the blood, elbow to elbow with those we trust to pull us out when it gets too thick.

It’s that bond of self-sacrifice and dedication, to both the mission and to each other, that separates us from the civilian sector. And it’s that level of caring that will keep our military running when cutbacks and policy changes make opportunities in the civilian market more appealing to our younger generations.

Gordon is with the 30th Intelligence Squadron at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia. The opinions expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Air Force or Military Times staff.

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