Adrift Amid the Rapids

I found myself thinking the other day about how quickly my military separation has arrived.

Months ago, when I submitted my resignation request, it felt impossibly distant—some far-off conclusion waiting at the end of a long road. Now, in just forty-five days, I will leave the institution that has structured my life for the better part of a decade.

What struck me most was not how quickly the date arrived. Time has always had a habit of moving faster than we expect.

What struck me was something stranger.

The apprehension I felt when I first clicked “submit” has steadily diminished as the date approaches. The uncertainty has not disappeared. I still do not know exactly what job I will take, where every opportunity will lead, or what the next chapter of my life will ultimately look like. Yet the closer I get, the calmer I become.

At the same time, many of the people around me seem to have experienced the opposite reaction. Friends, family, and coworkers who initially greeted the decision with curiosity or cautious support have become increasingly concerned as the date approaches. Their questions have grown more urgent. Their warnings more frequent. Their confidence in my decision seems to diminish precisely as mine grows.

The image that came to mind was absurdly dramatic but difficult to shake. It was as if I were drifting on a raft toward a waterfall while everyone standing safely on shore became more alarmed with every passing moment. They watched the distance close and wondered why I had refused to change course.

That dissonance stayed with me.

Not because I think they are wrong to be concerned. Leaving a stable career without a perfectly mapped future is objectively uncertain. What interested me was something deeper: why uncertainty seemed to become easier for me to bear as it became harder for those around me.

The future had not become any more predictable.

So why had my relationship to it changed?

It would be incorrect to say that the process has not been stressful, uncertain, or concerning to me at times. I care deeply about landing well on my feet, remaining financially solvent, and finding the stability and structure the military has provided for so long. The concerns expressed by my friends and family are not irrational. In many ways, they are the same concerns that occupied my own mind when I first made the decision.

Yet I increasingly find myself feeling something different when I look toward the future than when I first submitted my resignation. And I think that difference stems from something that is often invisible from the outside: the reason I felt compelled to leave in the first place.

Within the military itself, we often joke that the ultimate goal of military service is separation—that everyone secretly wants to leave and those who remain are simply in denial. It is a difficult profession that demands much of those who choose it. Yet I would not describe my decision to leave as exhaustion, resentment, or disillusionment with the institution itself.

I have known people who left bitterly, carrying their grievances with them into civilian life. I leave with gratitude.

The Navy took an ambitious teenager and transformed him into a man. Not all of that transformation was graceful. Some lessons were learned through failure, some through hardship, and some through mistakes I would rather not repeat. But the institution compressed decades of growth into a handful of years. It challenged me, humbled me, tested me, and ultimately gave me far more than it took.

Which only deepens the question: if I am grateful for what the Navy has given me, why do I feel so certain that it is time to leave?

On this tour, something changed.

Being stationed closer to home, spending less time at sea, and finally settling into something resembling a routine gave me a luxury that had been largely absent throughout much of my military career: the opportunity to reflect.

For most of my time in the Navy, the pace was relentless. Every new assignment, qualification, deployment, and challenge seemed to accelerate my development. The demands were immense, but so too was the growth they produced. The institution continuously forced me beyond the boundaries of who I thought I was capable of becoming.

But over the last few years, I began to notice something I had not anticipated.

The curve had flattened.

Not because the work became easy, nor because the Navy ceased demanding sacrifices. Rather, the sacrifices no longer seemed to produce the same transformation they once had. The challenges remained, but the lessons became increasingly familiar. The institution was still asking much of me, but it was no longer shaping me at the same rate it once had.

At the same time, something else was happening.

The dreams and ambitions I had cultivated outside the military no longer felt hypothetical. They no longer belonged to some distant future version of myself. The person I had become was capable of pursuing them now.

For years, those ambitions existed largely in the abstract. They were aspirations deferred until some later chapter of life. But gradually I realized they had become more important to me than many of the milestones still waiting further down my military career path.

The Navy had not failed me.

In many ways, it had succeeded.

It had transformed me into someone capable of pursuing a different future.

At some point, the decision became clear.

It was time to align my life with my aspirations.

A difficult choice, to be sure—one that introduced the very uncertainty so many people now worry about on my behalf. But it was a choice I felt compelled to make.

So why do I find myself more at ease as separation approaches, despite not having a specific job lined up?

The answer, I think, lies in my relationship to uncertainty itself.

In many ways, fear of the unknown was the strongest argument for staying in the Navy. The institution would almost certainly never fire me. I would have healthcare, a steady paycheck, a career track on which I was succeeding, and a strong retirement waiting at the end.

But it also offered certainty of another kind.

I could be reasonably certain that the institution would continue exercising significant control over the shape of my life. I would not be free to settle permanently in the place of my choosing. I would continue navigating restrictions on what I could publicly write and say. I would still need permission to visit my wife’s family in Colombia. Even seemingly trivial questions—how I wore my hair, whether I could get a tattoo, or how I chose to present myself—would remain subject to standards determined by someone else.

When I was younger, the decision to subordinate a measure of my personal agency to a larger institution felt not only reasonable, but noble. The Navy demanded sacrifice, but in return it provided structure, challenge, purpose, and growth. It asked much of me, but it gave even more.

Yet the nature of that bargain changes over time.

The same constraints that once accelerated my development increasingly began to limit the life I wanted to build. The institution that had helped shape me into the man I hoped to become was now asking me to postpone the very aspirations that transformation had produced.

What once felt like discipline began to feel like delay.

And once I recognized that, the question before me changed.

The choice was no longer between certainty and uncertainty. It was between two different kinds of uncertainty. One future carried the uncertainty of pursuing a life I genuinely wanted. The other carried the uncertainty of postponing it indefinitely.

For the first time, staying no longer felt safe.

It felt costly.

In my experience, the fear of delaying my life indefinitely has become more painful than the fear of unknown outcomes.

That does not mean I am unconcerned with those outcomes. I would like to find meaningful work. I would like to remain financially secure. I would like my plans to succeed. Like everyone else, I have preferences about how the future unfolds.

But I think I have come to recognize something important about uncertainty itself.

The uncertainty was always there.

Whether I remained in the Navy or left it, I was never guaranteed any particular outcome. The future has always existed beyond my control. Careers stall. Institutions change. Economies shift. Plans fail. The belief that we can secure certainty about the future is often little more than a comforting illusion.

What has changed is not my uncertainty about the future.

What has changed is my relationship to it.

I am no longer seeking reassurance from outcomes. Outcomes have never belonged entirely to me. They are shaped by chance, circumstance, and countless forces beyond my influence.

What belongs to me is the process.

What belongs to me are the choices.

What belongs to me is the ability to participate in shaping the life I wish to live.

That is what I find reassuring.

The uncertainty remains. I do not know exactly what comes next. I cannot know which opportunities will emerge, which plans will succeed, or which ambitions will fail.

But for the first time in a long time, I know that the path forward will be substantially authored by my own decisions.

The future remains uncertain.

My participation in it does not.

What I am recovering is not certainty.

It is agency.

Others may see the waterfall approaching day by day. I see it too.

But what gives me peace is not certainty about the river ahead.

It is the feeling of the rudder in my hands.

This essay is part of an ongoing project on human-centered democracy, moral agency, and popular sovereignty. If it resonated, share it with someone you trust. More at The Weekly Humanist.