I submit a “reflection” instead of “an experience” for this JO Jam.

In my present job, I work with many retired NCOs, one in particular who was in the parade in Berlin when the Berlin Wall came down. I was only a few months old when the Berlin Wall came down, so it’s only something that I have experienced through books, movies, and re-watching old news bits. Now, I’ve certainly experienced my fair share of folks my senior saying “what?! You don’t remember the Berlin Wall? You’re such a kid!”. But … here’s the rub … we have now entered a time period where classes entering / in college were only a few months old when 9/11 happened. And while I can distinctly remember my entire morning as a 12 year old kid watching the news in a classroom of my peers, a combination of uncertainty and juvenile jokes as a means to understand a situation that defined a period of US history, there are current cadets who will be future officers whom I may work with who will experience 9/11 the same way I experience the Berlin Wall coming down – just a blip on someone else’s history. I suppose this makes my reflection something of a plea for empathy. And this is also a way to say that I really struggle with ways to respond to or counteract generational joshing or even slurs. It’s usually an illogical off-handed comment that I can’t seem to consider a way to turn on its head without it becoming a slander towards the initiator, which is the opposite effect I’m going for in that situation. So how have I dealt with those situations? Likely not effectively. Mostly, an attempt to let that person’s true colors show and to role model through better behavior so that my Soldiers won’t see their leader acting like that. And in the future? By hopefully rising to the standards that I have written for myself.