Serve

When I was seventeen, I raised my right and took an oath:

I, Ryan Andrew Pavel, do solemnly swear that I will uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, so help me god.

Two decades later, I look back and wonder if seventeen-year-old Ryan had any clue what he was actually doing. I suspect not. He was a privileged and apathetic student who didn’t pay much attention in civics class. He probably had never read the full Constitution.

Past Ryan took that oath because he wanted to do something with his life. He yearned for structure and discipline. He, perhaps naively, thought it would be noble to deploy and help defend our country from abroad.

He was also licking his wounds from college rejection (I know I’m a broken record about this part of my story, but until more people openly talk about setbacks and how they shape us, I’m going to keep talking about it). That rejection was a forcing function to return the third voicemail of Staff Sergeant Salas, my tenacious recruiter. I think that teenager knew as he called Salas back that he had already made up his mind to enlist.

Here’s the thing: it both does and does not matter why I enlisted.

It matters because those reasons are part of my journey, no matter the reality of my actual experience.

But at the community level, my personal reasons are immaterial. I took the same oath as my fellow enlisted service members (the officer oath has some important differences — a post for another day), and I swore to stand side-by-side with them to obey orders and defend the Constitution.

The moment I took that oath, I formally became a part of something much bigger than myself. I pledged my next five years to service, subjugating my preferences and desires to the needs of the Marine Corps (what could possibly go wrong?!).

There’s something humbling, exciting, and eternally frustrating about licensing your freedom to the United States military. It forever changed me. It disabled me. It set me on a path to the most fulfilling career imaginable. It impacted how I raise my kids.

For all the scars I carry with me from service, I wouldn’t take it back for anything. In large part, that’s because the military taught me the true and unmistakable value of service.

I spoke yesterday at Winston & Strawn’s Salute to Service event. I worked at Winston for a hot minute before stepping into nonprofit leadership, and I’m genuinely impressed that instead of telling me to go pound sand (there’s no way they made back their training investment on me during the short time I was there), they invited me back to share my experience of working in the veteran space.

I didn’t want it to be a check-the-box Veterans Day speech. Every veteran has seen those. And knowing that only some of my audience would be veterans themselves, I reflected on what message I could share that could actually leave a mark on all attendees.

I settled on a single word around which I could orient my remarks: serve.

Service in its myriad forms allows individuals to channel their resources into a communal mission. It shifts focus from the self — that ever present ego — to others. Every single veteran, no matter where, when, how, or how they served, made the decision to sacrifice a portion of their own needs in order to be a part of something bigger than themselves. That matters.

After my remarks, I got to lead a panel of five veterans at the firm. They fully embraced the theme, candidly and authentically sharing their experiences. As different as we were from each other, there’s that bond and shared commitment to service that has informed our lives. I hope their stories resonated with the audience as much as they did with me.

Veterans and nonveterans alike should strive to build service into their lives. Be it time, treasure, or talent, everyone has something to offer. Not everyone has to leave the law firm and join a nonprofit full time (a point I was careful to make in my remarks, lest I be blamed for an exodus of attorneys from the firm), but everyone can and should be committed to contributing to something bigger and communal.

So on this Veterans Day, I leave you with the same call to action I relayed to those lawyers and staff: find a concrete way to build service into your life.

For you, for others, for our democracy, for humanity.

Serve.