So whilst I think back to a day when a young man went to war, full of bravado, I returned a changed man.

They said I changed a lot. I said a lot changed me.

I definitely learned a lesson this time. I know that I can be broken. I am not as tough as I thought. I see it now. At this point, it's the only thing good that came out of all of this. I know myself better now and know what I have to do.

Yes, I decided, a man can truly change. The events of the past year have taught me much about myself, and a few universal truths. I learned, for instance, that while wounds can be inflicted easily upon those we love, it's often much more difficult to heal them. Yet the process of healing those wounds provided the richest experience of my life, leading me to believe that while I've often overestimated what I could accomplish in a day, I had underestimated what I could do in a year. But most of all, I learned that it's possible for two people to fall in love all over again, even when there's been a lifetime of disappointment between them.

I would say that I learned something new, maybe not necessarily about my skill but more about how I exert my skill – my stamina, my endurance. I learned a lot about that. That’s after a lot of great offseason work, and now to build off of that. Each offseason, I’m like, ‘OK, I did this much. What’s it going to look like?’ It’s amazing to see that there are still more changes to be made after each season. I’m in that right now and it feels really good.

I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence.

You have learned the lesson by experience.

The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self.
You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal.
I call it an education.

Everything's different. You have to recognise the fact that I'm different. Time goes on, and you change. I'm coming into this as a different guy, that's probably the biggest thing.

But I was a changed and better man for my introduction to philosophy, and especially to Epictetus. I was on a different track--certainly not an anti military track, but to some extent an anti-organization track. Against the backdrop of all the posturing and fumbling that peacetime military organizations seem to have to go through, to accept the need for graceful and unself conscious improvisation under pressure, to break away from set procedures, forces you to be reflective as you put a new mode of operation together. I had become a man detached-not aloof but detached-able to throw out the book without the slightest hesitation when it no longer matched the external circumstances. I was able to put juniors over seniors without embarrassment when their wartime instincts were more reliable. This new abandon, this new built-in flexibility I had gained, was to payoff later in prison.

This is what happened to me to Here is what I learned from this situation will change how the stories of your past feel.

It is a good lesson - though it may often be a hard one - for a man... to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.

I was a whole new human being, he said of this transformation. I liked people, they liked me. It was like an exorcism, kicking the devil outta me!

So it came to pass that as he trudged from the place of blood and wrath his soul changed.