Living Life on High Alert

Earlier this year, I was walking out of my Management Policies class which is a night course, where I have been attending college for the last three and a half years and walked into a “high threat area” what is that exactly? It is an area in which presents an environment that produces the highest probability of a volatile situation. As I walked to my car I immediately realized that my surroundings were not “ideal”. I was alone where it is usually very busy (as where I park it is a bus transit station, and always has people milling about…but not this night), the lights were out, and an alley is adjacent to where I park. So I took this all into account; maintained an aggressive posture and continued walking to my car at an external site from my school approximately 500 meters from the university. As I crossed the four way intersection I began to walk towards where I was parked maintaining a patrol like vigilance scanning the area around me, and out of the corner of my eye I picked up a “possible threat” it was a single male, white with a slim build and a hoody, so I made note and continue walking, but reached in my pocket to locate the knife I have at all times, gripped it, and began playing out how I was going to play this scenario out if it came down to getting gritty! So with my decision made and the “threat” within my “imminent personal bubble” and about a hands length from my most vulnerable position (which would be entering my car) I made my stand! Which was to garner my pocket knife and turn and face my aggressor, and stare him in his eye displaying that I was a “take no shit kind of person” but at the same time I was in the rear of my Ford Five Hundred, and did not realize that another element was coming to my aid – my license plate which states that I am a Iraq Veteran. So I stood facing a tall, slim, white male with no words spoken by either side just pure malicious intent! He stared at me and then my knife and then my license plate about three times trying to rationalize the scenario. All the while I was postured up, and staring him in the face ready for him to make a move, but after what seemed like 5 minutes, but was really about 60 seconds he choose the flight option in a “fight or flight” situation and disembarked in the direction of the dark alley in which he started his offensive agenda. (I know many are saying why did you not chase him! It crossed my mind but I know the strategies and beginnings of an ambush and I did not posses the assets to pursue a victorious counter offensive) I made a police report the following day(I waited as it was late and I wanted to go home). As I lingered on the thought of my situation happening to someone else that may not be as well equipped to handle that type of situation, and as any tale of felonious larceny and assault in the Ypsilanti, MI area the person was never found nor a wide scale investigation completed.

Why did I start this post named “Living life on High Alert” with this particular story because I wanted you to see that what I am about to explain plays out well for my life. If you have not read my article on “Victory over Adversity” I would recommend taking a moment to read it so that you can get the full intention of this article.

I wake up everyday with a sense of high alert and internal rage, and this is something that carries with me everyday of my life, and never really holsters itself. At any moment I feel capable of reaching out and “crushing someone’s skull” as the Marine Corps so delicately taught me, or to put it as General “Mad Dog” Mattis told it “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.” I am not saying that I want to kill everyone, but simply using a reference for my current “high alert” posture, and give you another perspective outside how I was raised as to why I am the way I am.

I maintain a defensive strategy in my home at all times and without giving away all of my defensive strategies to a ill willed individual I will tell you some of my strategy of “Life on High Alert” so that you can get a glimpse of how it plays out in my daily life. It starts with locked doors at all times as a first line of defense while in home and out of it. Locked doors are supported with various weapons of “opportunity” throughout my home, so that I do not get backed into a scenario if it were to arise that I would not have the means to defend my home and family from. The locations of those items- well I will leave that to an intruder to find out, when I have to use them!(as they say to each there own) I know many probably cannot connect with me at this point, but stay with me. The Marine Corps Infantry taught me many things that translated well into my personal life, but one lesson clung to me the quickest-that in order to have a great defense, one needs a superior offense- (no, I did not divulge some secret military stratagem, but more military common sense-if it exist). I know what you are thinking what does the mean? So let me explain; in order to have superior defense you must have a sizable ferocious offense, so that no one will ever find your line of defense and want to try their hand at compromising it-makes sense right? I live this out in my daily life, as I always keep my head up and ears open in public while my eyes continually look around to analyze my environment. My posture and voice always remain firm enough to portray confidence, but also to void any suspicions that I am not able to “carry the sword I am wielding!”- A kind of …”if you jump, I can jump higher! I guarantee it” (many are probably hearing the Men’s Warehouse commercial in their head). This is my daily perspective of walking this blissful Earth, many may think I am crazy, but it has saved me many times over the course of my life. It is not tiring to operate the way I do; it is just not easy to explain to people that A.) Have not been in the Military, and B.) Have never been a victim in a scenario that did not have the tools to control.

Another scenario of “life on high alert” happened to me yesterday. I was confronted with a scenario that many would have probably played down, but I played it out. I was walking to my office and exiting an ally way in which I use from time to time to vary my routes to and from work (terrorism 101…Marines know) when I was bombarded with a series of incoherent babblings to which I quickly found out originated from a short Indian girl with a cellular phone in her hand, frantically looking for someone to help her in a low traffic area. So I took an aggressive posture preparing for bait and attack type ambush; told her to slow down, and began assessing the situation which i quickly decided was controllable and after doing a quick 360 degree scan of the area I took a position with my back about an arms distance to a all Window wall behind me, so that I would only have to control 180 degrees of the environment around me, and at this point I allowed her to come closer to me and explain herself. It turned out she had just came to America from India and she was making her way to Chicago but a relative who drove her from the Airport mistakenly took her bus pass for the last stretch of her trip. So I gave her my phone and after about six conversations on my phone (that I could not understand) she had received that information to obtain a new pass from the bus transit office. So in the words of George W. Bush “Mission Accomplished” and crisis adverted. I know many of you would not have taken the amount of precautionary measures but that is how I handle any scenario in my life of high alert. I committed myself to never becoming a victim again and I always tell people when they ask “if you do not prepare to be a victim; you will be one!” Simply meaning that if you do not have a plan or safeties in place there is a higher probability you will find yourself in a bad situation without the means to achieve a positive outcome.

So what is the point of this article? Protect yourselves, Life has a precarious way of developing and I always try to be proactive in preparation when it comes to mitigating risk, seeking positive opportunity, exposing volatile scenarios, and never going backwards in life accomplishments. I have a solemn vow to be great, and I intend to be just that and I think everyone has this ability to do the same. I live my life on high alert by choice and by the exposure of past actions in my life. I strive to live my life surrounded by positive, well directed people that want only the best for my life and theirs. I think we are drawn to negative people and they enjoy maintaining “hostages” in their life or people that cannot close with and destroy a poor influencer from their life as they do not posses the skills to do so. I want to call these influencers succubus’s of success as these types of people have to have active audiences to tell their tales of hate and discontent or they lose there power to condemn and slow lives of others. I have found that as I raised my level of “personal” security my life reaped the benefits of a better outlook and a more productive tempo. I am not championing a alert level like myself, but I want others to analyze their greatest fears and see that they can overcome them, and be better then what stops them from pursuing “life outside the wire” or life after fear. We are the purveyors of our future, and the protectors of our sanctity as human beings. I live my life on high alert as a choice and I have overcome hurdle after hurdle with this mindset. Life is not easy, but it gets easier with the right mindset and great company.