Story Time: Rings and Reckonings
I want to step outside of dog training for a moment, because what good is training a dog if the trainer remains unchanged? Let’s take a few minutes and walk through two stories that altered the course of my life. Stories that still echo in how I speak, how I carry myself, and how I engage with the world around me. These aren’t polished lessons, wrapped in neat bows. They’re scars and moments, jagged and holy.
And I’ll tell you plainly: if more people could absorb even a fraction of what I learned in these moments, the world might, just might, begin to heal.
The Breakfast Table
The year was 2013. I was a Private First Class in the U.S. Army, twenty-five years old and blazing with testosterone and self-righteous certainty. I had a hard work ethic and a chip on my shoulder the size of a duffel bag. I thought I was God’s gift to leadership and America’s next great warrior.
Ironically, just last week I saw myself again. I was on a hound hunt in Idaho, and the outfitter running the operation was 25, full of fire and certainty, just like I had been. Watching him was like looking in a mirror that didn’t ask for permission. It was jarring. Humbling.
Back in 2013, America was boiling. Michael Brown. Ferguson. The rise of Black Lives Matter. NFL players kneeling during the anthem. I didn’t understand any of it. Didn’t want to. I was in uniform, and I believed that gave me the moral high ground. That the flag I stood under and saluted wasn't just a symbol, but sacred.
One morning, I was sitting in the chow hall with two other privates, stuffing our faces before another long EMT course. The TV played Fox News on loop. Kneeling players filled the screen.
I felt rage swell in me. How dare they? Millionaires disrespecting the anthem? Disrespecting the sacrifice of soldiers like me?
It wasn’t just anger. It was pride. Insecurity. Narcissism masquerading as patriotism. I didn’t know it then, but I do now. The private next to me nodded along, feeding the fire with his own disdain.
But across the table sat another man. PFC Sonnek. Thirty-two years old, a quiet thinker, not exactly the image of a squared-away soldier. He had some college credits but no degree, shot okay, didn’t crush PT. Not a rockstar, not a wreck—just a man trying to figure life out.
He looked up from his cereal, glanced at the screen, and said, “Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion.”
Then he took another bite like he hadn’t just dropped a grenade on the table.
I exploded. “Are you kidding me? We’re in the Army. People died in this uniform. You’re a traitor!”
Sonnek didn’t flinch. Just shrugged, finished his cereal, and walked away.
I stewed on that all day. Angry. Confused. Offended.
And then, like lightning cracking a dead sky, I saw it.
He was right. I was wrong. My experience, my uniform, my sense of moral superiority didn’t give me the right to silence another man’s view. My rage wasn’t righteous; it was insecure. Fragile. Self-centered.
That night, I knocked on his door and apologized.
He smiled, shrugged, and said, “You're good, man. Wanna play poker?”
That moment, that man, taught me something that’s never left me: you can be loud and wrong at the same time. You can be right about the feeling and wrong about the reaction. And that if you’re not willing to hear the person across from you, you’re probably not someone worth hearing either.
The Rings
Now let me tell you about the other moment. The one that taught me where my battles actually are.
I served in the 2-503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne, jumping out of planes and helicopters for an extra $150 a month. Let me be the first to say: it wasn’t worth it.
Thirty jumps total. Six to eight of those included mid-air malfunctions. Twisted risers, partially open canopies, the sort of thing that turns bravado into bone-deep stillness real fast.
But in the Army, we don’t train once. We train until it becomes reflex. You see the risers twisted, and your hands know what to do before your brain finishes panicking. That’s muscle memory. That’s training.
The first time it happened, I was falling over the Italian countryside, risers tangled like a bird’s nest. I took a breath. Placed my hands where they were supposed to go. Kicked out. Fixed it. Carried on.
That habit, breathe, act, don’t panic, I call it Rings.
Because life has rings, too. Inner rings: your family, your spouse, your closest friends. The people you can actually impact. Then come the outer rings, acquaintances, colleagues, old friends. And beyond that, strangers on the internet, foreign governments, social movements, and war.
Most people spend their emotional energy flailing at the outer rings, trying to fix what they can’t touch. It’s wasted motion. It’s spiritual hypoxia.
You can't fix the war in Ukraine. You can't stop bias in the media. You can't change the heart of a stranger halfway across the world. But you can speak kindly to your wife. You can play poker with a man you once yelled at. You can train your children with grace and strength. Those are the rings that matter.
But we’ve been trained, manipulated, even, to care about everything equally. To set our hair on fire for every breaking headline. To think our opinions are urgently needed on every global crisis.
They aren’t.
And the minute I realized that, I stopped giving myself away to things I couldn’t change and started investing in the things I could.
The Outfitter
That brings me back to Idaho. To the 25-year-old outfitter who saw my disinterest in global politics and called me an isolationist. A pacifist. Said it was our moral duty to “take out evil.”
It felt like I was being screamed at by my younger self. And for the first time, I understood why I used to exhaust the people around me.
I told him no—I wouldn’t get emotionally entangled in conflicts I couldn’t influence. That my energy was better spent protecting my family and loving the people in front of me. He scoffed. Quoted Fox News. Told me I didn’t care about the world.
But here’s the truth: I do care. I just know where to aim that care. And I know better now than to aim it at a screen and call it righteousness.
Eventually, I left the hunt early. I couldn’t stomach the arrogance. But I left grateful, too. Grateful for the mirror. For the reminder of who I was, and how far I’ve come.
We all grow together. But only if we choose to.
So maybe ask yourself today:
Where are you spending your energy?
Who’s actually in your rings?
And when the canopy doesn’t open the way it should,
will you panic?
Or will you breathe…
and act?
Because that, my friend, is the difference between falling apart and falling forward.