The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL

by Eric Greitens

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”

the media traffics in tragedy, but often misses stories of strength.

We’d learned

in Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape school that the world’s most effective interrogators, from World War II to the present day, are men who use their intelligence to establish rapport and gain information.

Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, wrote that human beings create meaning in three ways: through their work, through their relationships, and by how they choose to meet unavoidable suffering. Every life brings hardship and trial, and every life also offers deep possibilities for meaningful work and love.