Author: Sebastian Junger

Small yet Mighty!

Purpose and connection will build your Tribe, but you must decide to join.

In 2016, I felt unsettled. I had been out of the military for about 4 years. Everything was just fine. I was steadily grinding on a PhD, raising an amazing family, and I had wonderful friends. Yet for some reason, I could not shake the feeling that I was wandering in life.

It was around this time that I heard an interview with Sebastian Junger on the Tim Ferriss Show Podcast (#161) about Tribes, which led me to immediately purchase this book.  Junger’s book was the first time someone put a label to what I lost when leaving the military – my Tribe.

Junger describes the roles of Tribes across the history of humankind. He talks of purpose, belonging, and acceptance.  Tribes have rituals and process complex emotions together.  The strength of the Tribe is greater than the sum of its members.

The military is a culture connected by shared behaviors and values. The people with whom I served were my Tribe. We found purpose in serving both the mission and the team. The Tribe always provided a way to handle the emotions-together. We mourned publicly, as a group, when we lost friends. We celebrated milestones in our careers or achievements with ritual ceremony. Our culture gave us a collective framework to process this messy world together.

I walked away from my Tribe. I left.

Junger ‘s book helped me realize how hard it truly is to leave the military. Leaving my Tribe felt like choosing isolation. Junger was the first person to tell me, through his book, that this was all okay.  Yearning to return to combat, fly aircraft again, to swap war stories – these were all manifestations of my primal need for my Tribe. I was grieving the Tribe I had left.

Connecting with the loss of Tribe helped me to finally see – clearly – that my Tribe was still all around me. Yes, I had left the military. But my Tribe remained.

My Tribe were the people – not the uniform. We had first formed by bonds of culture and clothe and ritual.  The bonds remained, however, long after the uniform hung in closets. My Tribe wasn’t lost at all. We had simply changed clothes.

My Tribe thrives–living a life of purpose, defined by the values of sacrifice and service. Join us!