Michael Sinnock reflects on more than three decades since joining the Navy, and what he would actually tell that twenty year old today.

What I Would Tell the Twenty Year Old Walking Onto the USS Tarawa

**AUTHOR:** Michael Sinnock

Michael Sinnock reflects on more than three decades since joining the Navy, and what he would actually tell that twenty year old today.

In 1994, I walked onto USS Tarawa as a brand new Boatswain's Mate, twenty years old and completely certain I understood what discipline and toughness meant. I did not, not really, not yet. More than thirty years later, I have a much clearer picture of what actually mattered in everything that came after, and what I wish someone had told me plainly instead of letting me learn it the slow way.

## What I Would Tell Him About Discipline

That twenty year old thought discipline meant gritting your teeth through hard physical work and following orders without complaint. He was not wrong, exactly, but he was only seeing the smallest, most visible layer of it.

What I would actually tell him is that real discipline is not about the moments when someone is watching and the standard is obvious. It is about the thousands of ordinary, unwitnessed moments afterward, long after the uniform comes off, when nobody is checking and the standard still has to come from somewhere inside you. The habits built on that ship did not stay on that ship. They showed up fifteen years later in how I trained new police officers, and they show up now in how I handle a case file at a federal desk job he could not have imagined for himself at twenty.

## What I Would Tell Him About the Hard Years

There were years, after the Navy and after a decade on the Memphis police force, that I am not going to dwell on in detail here, because the specifics matter less than what they taught me. I made serious mistakes during that stretch. I am not going to pretend otherwise, and I am not going to dramatize it either. What I will say plainly is that more than sixteen years have gone into proving, mostly to myself, that those years did not get the final word.

What I would tell that young man is that the years that feel like detours are very often the foundation, and you usually cannot tell the difference while you are living through them. Equipment operator at a secure Army installation. Facility maintenance technician managing budgets most people never think about. Warehouse supervisor training other employees on procedures that mattered more than anyone outside that building would ever know. None of those jobs looked like redemption while I was doing them. Looking back, they were exactly that.

Michael Shane Sinnock did not arrive at a federal career, an Outstanding performance record, and a life he is genuinely proud of by a straight line. He arrived by refusing to stop rebuilding, one unglamorous job at a time, long after it would have been easier to decide the hard years had already defined him.

## What I Would Tell Him About Love

I have been married three times. I would tell that twenty year old, with real honesty, that two of those marriages are going to end, and that it is going to hurt in ways he cannot yet picture. I would also tell him something that matters more than the warning, which is this. Do not let that stop you from reaching for it again.

I am a romantic at heart under a fairly stoic exterior, and I stayed one through every disappointment, which turned out to be the only reason I recognized the right thing when it finally arrived. I found her on the other side of the world, in a small town at the base of an active volcano, and we built something real across distance and culture that neither of my first two marriages had to survive. I would tell him that being wrong about love twice is not proof you are bad at it. It is proof you kept trying, which is the only way anyone actually gets it right eventually.

## What I Would Actually Say to Him

If I could sit down with that twenty year old for five minutes, here is what I would tell him, plainly, without the thirty years of context he does not have yet:

The discipline you are building right now is going to matter far longer than you think, in rooms and jobs you cannot picture from where you are standing. The hard years ahead are not a detour from your real life. They are going to be the foundation of it, even though it will not feel that way while you are living through them. Trust your gut more than you currently do. It is going to be right more often than you give it credit for, and ignoring it is going to cost you more than following it ever will. Love is worth the risk of being wrong about it again. Protecting yourself from that risk is not actually safety, it is just a slower way of losing. The people who matter most are not always the ones in front of you at twenty. Stay open to finding them, wherever they turn out to be.

I do not know exactly what he would have done with any of that at twenty years old, standing on that deck with his whole life still ahead of him. Probably not much differently than he actually did. But I know I would have told him anyway, because that is what thirty years eventually gives you the standing to do.

I am stepping into a quieter stretch for a while, a little time away to take stock before picking this back up. If this is your first time reading something I have written, there is a lot more of the story at www.michaelsinnock.com.

**AUTHOR BIO:**

About Michael Sinnock: Michael Sinnock is a U.S. Navy veteran and Office Automation Assistant with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's Memphis District Office. A Memphis professional whose career spans military service, federal employment, and logistics management, he writes about public service, resilience, the curiosity that keeps life interesting, and the long, worthwhile work of becoming someone you are proud of. Read more of his writing at www.michaelsinnock.com.