Having spent 10 years in service as a Royal Marine commando, two years as a maritime security operator, and over a decade as a close protection operator out in Iraq, it can sometimes feel like I have spent a big part of my life surrounded by warfare, its allure and the fallout from it.
Truth be told, I was never the best soldier – not by any stretch of the imagination – but nevertheless I learned a lot while serving for Queen and country. And while I can’t speak as to why others join the military, I can tell you why I did.
As a teenager growing up in London, I found myself in a situation where I was facing street fights and violent altercations with other young men on a daily basis.
Having to constantly look over my shoulder, fearful that a violent adversary would appear – sometimes, as if out of nowhere, to launch a vicious attack – grew tiresome.
It wore me down to the point that I felt I would have to retaliate in such a way that my rivals would never again be in a position to have any sort of altercation, or to simply step away, removing myself from the equation.
Thankfully, I stepped away, choosing the latter with a new goal in sight: to join the Royal Marine Commandos. I hadn’t dreamed of joining the military as a child but here was a revered institution that I saw as a platform to channelling all of the anger, frustration and inner turmoil I felt within.
Again, for the sake of absolute honesty, I admit that in the back of my mind was the hope that I might be able to legally kill someone in a war situation one day, inflicting my own form of suffering onto a world that, to my immature mind, had done me wrong.
Although violent street encounters played a significant part in driving me to this, one of the many underlying issues that influenced my state of mind at that time was insecurity. This took many forms: insecurity that I wasn’t manly enough; that my body wasn’t what it was supposed to be; that I didn’t really know how to talk to or be with women; that I would never be enough for whatever it was I was supposed to be here in life, and numerous other aspects of crippling self-doubt.
I felt that by joining the military, I would become something more … part of something bigger than little doubtful, insecure me. And, at the start, for the most part, it worked.
The military breaks you down from whatever it was you thought you were before joining, concept by concept. So you thought you were a fast runner? There’s someone there faster than you. You saw yourself as a joker? There’s someone there with way more banter than you. You fancied yourself as a tough guy? There’s someone there much harder, who’s banged out more people than you’ve had hot meals. You go to war, have a few contacts and see yourself as a killer? There are people there who have had more contacts than you’ve got in your phone book.
Also, quite ironically, having joined up owing to a desire to want to kill people – now with a deeper understanding of the phrase “hurt people hurt people” – what actually happened instead was that in 2007, whilst out on deployment in Afghanistan, I was shot and wounded, and forced to face my own fragility and impermanence.
I loved my time in the Marines – the people I met, the experiences I had, and the role it played in my life journey. However, once I left and was no longer ‘a Marine’, my identity crisis began, because if I wasn’t ‘a Marine’ anymore, then who and what was I?
And, in all fairness, I hadn’t entirely stepped away from what is within a soldier’s remit. I guess some could even say it was more of a lateral move, for I had managed to stay within the comfort zone of what I had come to know. My new line of work was being a close protection operator.
Yes, it was less of a frontline role than that of a soldier, and yet still … there they were, all of my insecurities, directing my actions and choices once again. I’d left the military but hadn’t really overcome any of the self-esteem issues I’d entered with.
In 2022, in Iraq, whilst sat in a B6 armoured vehicle reading A New Earth by spiritual self-help author Eckart Tolle, something happened that I can only call a ‘spiritual intervention’.
I read a line that stated …
One thing we do know is that life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you’re having right now.
It felt like something awoke within me and, as it stirred and became even more aware of itself, I was shown in my mind’s eye a number of interconnected events, each one leading to the other.
I saw with new eyes why I had unconsciously made the choices that led me to the places I had been, and at exactly the right moments in time. Choices which allowed me to meet the people I had to meet, including my teenage adversaries, and even the individual who pulled the trigger of the rifle that sent the bullet that hit me on its trajectory.
All of these individuals and situations helped influence my unconscious state of mind, which was the ever-changing sum total of a never-ending equation, based on external factors leading me to a place of inner turmoil and suffering, forcing me to begin asking the questions being birthed within from a place of immovable authenticity.
The more I introspected, the more I reconnected with my truest sense of self … the same self that exists inside of each and every one of us.
Whilst experiencing this unexplainable inner transformation, assisted by ancient technologies of Latin American tribes, I reclaimed my self-love, joy, inner peace, and a deep knowing from within that I am worthy of life.
Most importantly, I found my truth, and it is, I believe, a universal truth: that we come here to help each other suffer into awakening.
Existence is full of hardship and challenge, but I am convinced that there is a deeper reason behind everything we experience during our lives. Every struggle is a lesson that we can learn from or ignore; some, sadly, remain ignorant across their life but in my case, I finally paid attention and recognised that I could no longer be the victim in my life.
I am no longer part of the military but yet this discovery has left me feeling more empowered than ever before.
Now, I can no longer look at the things that I had once perceived as woeful experiences and judge them in a negative light. Instead, I embrace them all, for I embrace love, not hate.
We live in a dangerous world and the military plays a vital role in keeping us safe, but the sense of camaraderie and discipline it instils brings us no closer to finding out the things that fundamentally matter.
Had I not explored further, I would still be confusing a uniform with who I am and what I am, intrinsically. Many make the same mistake, hanging significance on labels, which can even be as basic as your name, when what is really significant lies beneath, not upon the surface of life.
That’s why I’ve shared my journey in my new book, A Few Words from an Absolute Nobody – to help others see why we must be guided by love and solidarity in a world beset by tragedy and challenge.
Perhaps it will even help youngsters who are experiencing the same pain and doubt that clouded my thoughts for too long. Perhaps they, too, wish to enter into service and if so, I would encourage them – as long as they know, as I do now, that a military life will not end internal conflict.
For that, you must dare to venture on another kind of journey entirely.
A Few Words from an Absolute Nobody by Ricardo available on Amazon, priced £12.99 in paperback and £9.99 as an in eBook. For more information, visit www.ricardochinauthor.com or follow Ricardo on Instagram.
