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Embracing the Suck
Enjoying misery down to the marrow
When I was in the United States Army, we had a saying when things were as miserable as they could get. We would say “embrace the suck.” What that meant was rather than complain or get angry about the situation, it was better to embrace it, to accept it. We would say “this whole thing effin sucks, and I’m OK with it.” It was a way to suffer less in situations that gave ample opportunity to do so. It was an earlier version of the saying “pain is inevitable but suffering is optional.”
Sometimes we would go on war maneuvers, practicing how to blow up people we have never met and preparing for a war we never fought. I was stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado, so this meant sometimes going to the field in the winter when it is cold and windy. If you were looking for misery, this was a good place to find it. Not only was it cold and sometimes snowy, but there was no place to go to get out of the cold and snow, and we often went to the field for a week or more at a time. This meant sleeping outside in the winter in a sleeping bag and waking to a breakfast of C-rations, cold C-rations. Inside the box of C-rations are several dark green cans filled with different foods. If…
