“Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to, but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.”
-Joseph Heller

Twice in my life I have read the 1961 novel known as Catch-22. The first time was in high school, and from the opening pages I found myself completely taken in by the narrative. Fantastic fiction! I tore through the story and found Captain Yossarian to be the kind of World War II antihero that I could get behind. As a kid I had never been particularly interested in military-themed subjects, but I distinctly remember feeling amazed that Falmouth High School had placed this book on its summer reading list.About seven years later, I was a junior naval officer stationed on board a destroyer. While scanning the wardroom bookshelf one day, I came upon an old paperback copy of the John Heller classic. As I flipped it open, I remembered how entertaining it was—despite the fact that I’d read hundreds of books in that time since I’d last thought about it. I decided to read it again, expecting to discover renewed enjoyment now that I saw life through the lens of the military. Again, I sped through the story—this time buzzing through the chapters with a different kind of interest. It was because this second reading—my god—it struck me as something of a revelation: this book is reality masquerading as fiction. From time to time, I still think about Catch-22. In the years and months that have passed, I have found myself compelled to seek it anew—especially when caught in situations that seem just a bit little ridiculous. I never of course have time to actually return to the novel—life is just too busy. More often than not my attention immediately returns to addressing the kind of situations where I think to myself, no one would believe that this is actually happening.It’s not exclusive to the military, but I’ve participated in projects that necessitate undertaking all manner of confounding and needlessly complicated tasks. As leaders, we get served mandates that are high on expectations, but lacking on resources that enable mission success. I’m not saying that this happens all the time, but there are moments where I feel as though a pile of twisted up Rubik’s Cubes have been dumped in front of me. I have no idea how to solve them, but I’ve been told that they must be solved them in five minutes using spoons instead of my fingers. YouTube won’t get me out of this jam either because the firewall is in force and serves to protect us from ourselves.  I know that none of this makes sense—but that’s kind of my point in using it as an example.All of those—no matter where we work or how we live, are constantly faced with this kind of grunt work. Whether it necessitates that you artificially move a bomb line forward, or you use your cunning to find a suitable workaround, you can’t ignore the fact that life necessitates a lot of ridiculousness. This is why I find a sense of humor so critical.  And because of or perhaps in spite of all us stressors, each day presents another opportunity to try everything again. You wake up, do a quick scan of what’s hanging in front of you. You swing your legs onto the bedroom floor—and then it’s off to the races. Each day is different because you encounter new aspects of the mission. The problems of life are invariably shifting. I find that as these things crop up, it is that the cups of coffee, smoking or gym breaks are interspersed to make the entire experience more manageable.I’m not saying any of this from a place of despair. On the contrary, I’m fairly confident that we are the primary architects of the problem sets that get invariably strung together. As I move along in life, I also suspect that the overall charter of life is to complete our chores while successfully weaving our preferred habits into the construct. As for myself, if I don’t manage to work that last bit into my daily routine—imprinting my personal watermark onto whatever it is—then I risk growing a bit unbalanced. On the path to becoming a bit like Yossarian. If you read the book, you can see why all he ever wanted was to be sent home. The missions were always ridiculous, and he had no respite.When I talk about books of satire or the more challenging aspects of one’s career, I don’t mean to say that it all adds up to pointless enterprise. Sometimes it’s not about achieving perfection at all. Rather, it’s more about touching upon some other sort of underlying raison d’être. Maybe the point is just to keep a collection of humans in a confined bunker for extended periods of time without killing one other. Maybe a task is stupid, or the obstacle is completely daunting and seemingly worthless—but I can always find brighter spots outside my immediate frame of view. And in this case I mean that it’s usually about the people. Helping each other move through life with a bit of ease and humor. This is where things really matter.  As I get older—and the longer that I wear the uniform—I don’t pretend to have grown any smarter about how to get things done or why we must do them. And it helps that I’m not living in some sort of WWII hell, either.  Instead, on the broader scale, I learn not to take things too seriously. I try not to take my cosmic frustrations out on other people. I get that the daily effort, on the best of days, does indeed contribute to something larger.I have a feeling that life no matter where I am will always resemble a cross between Catch-22and the quieter moments where I get to tend to myself. And life will always include missions that would certify us as crazy for attempting them—but for the most part, we can look at the parameters and recognize the underlying payoff. On most days, you’ll fly anyway—and hopefully with it you’ll aim for a bit of humor.  I’m not sure exactly what it all leads to—but I guess the point is to still do it.