It was in Brown Mountain, North Carolina when while staying at my
son's summer camp I met Carl, who was working as resident staff together with
Patricia, his wife from Honduras. He was on his way out after being fired
because of a situation with the camp's director. We came into conversation when
I asked him about his old BMW convertible and so we had a longer chat, where I
learned that he had been in several war zones as a hired soldier to protect the
Red Cross. During the war in Bosnia, Carl's nervous system was destroyed in a
poison gas attack. Thanks to a combination of drugs and his service dog that
reminds him when to take the shots, he maintains his biochemistry functioning
and himself alive. I knew that dogs were used to sniff drugs, bombs and to find
people after earth quakes, but I had never heard that they can smell if a
patient needs to take his meds.
Carl is a senior combatant, a fighter, a real mercenary, a man of
war, a man of conflicts, a man that provides safety and security for his
clients, a man that is willing to lose his life protecting others for money, a
man of stealth blue eyes faithful to God and our flag, the star spangled
banner.
He keeps his ripped and vein covered body in shape by performing
exercise routines he learned from Russian mercenaries. Hundreds of daily push
ups, squads, sit ups and other routines using his own body weight are necessary
to maintain the core of this well functioning killing machine. Special training
of leg grappling, back bending, arm-twisting, disarming, gun pulling and neck
locking techniques allow Carl to put down anybody in seconds.
He does not require any weapon, but he knows them all and keeps a five-inch
Cold Steel folding knife in his front jeans pocket. With this razor sharp
instrument he can cut through tendons like through butter. He needs no gym, nor
weights, nor Crossfit PT; he trains anywhere at any time. Although in his late
50s, the disciplined practice of different routines, allows him to throw his shoulders
into the knees of opponents within seconds and with flexibility better than any
10-year-old kid. His hands are fast and strong like the paws of a bear and his
back is a little bit bent, but still solid like a wooden mast of an old ship
that has sailed many oceans.
Even though Carl does not have a high level of education, he is
clear about his limitations and conscious about his strengths. His position is
set by his rare abilities acquired in combat since the 70s. At least 900 $ per
day he charges to be in protective international mission or to perform a
security training. But before putting a human weapon on your side, you want to
know if this person is psychologically sane and stable. How can you know?
Asking for personal references or only hiring through trusted security
companies? Carl asked me to go into business with him: He would do the teaching
and I would take care of marketing. For sure there is a necessity, especially
for executives traveling to Latin America, but I realized that this is not my
essence. I do not want to be in the business of surviving and killing, I want
to be in the enterprise of creating good.
How did I find out? I asked myself the question: "Where would
my soul go if during my life I had been responsible executer of uncountable
fatalities like Carl" Nobody really knows for sure, but there are
different believes around this question depending on what religion you ask. The
Catholics would either forgive or send you to hell. The Buddhist would let you be born again as an inferior form of live,
like an insect or a rat. And it would take many lives to clean up your karma.
The Muslims would send you to a paradise full of virgins if you exterminated
mainly the infidel. The Taoist would probably say that Carl is meant to be and
represents one extreme in the continuous quest of the yin and yang balance.
Besides learning some neck snapping techniques, what I got out of
this encounter with Carl was the realization that even though I like martial
arts and weapons, I do not want to be a survivor from the evil, I want to be a
creator of good. So remember, next time you face a challenging situation or you
meet a person that has an impact on you, look through the first impression,
read in between the lines of what happened and think about what message the
universe is delivering to you.
