Christopher Holshek is a recently retired Colonel, U.S. Army (Reserve) Civil Affairs and a Senior Associate at the Project on National Security Reform. To mark his retirement, he embarked on a more than 8,000-mile, 150-hour butt-on-seat, Harley Davidson motorcycle tour of the country he has spent 20 of the last 30 years in uniformed service outside of to help secure. During this journey, he toured America’s southern and western frontiers, commemorated his retirement at the New Mexico Military Institute where he began his military service, and escorted a group of George Mason University graduate students on a field trip to Liberia.
However, in many respects, this was also a journey within a journey that evoked John Steinbeck’s observation, in Travels with Charley, that “a journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”
“Often the longest of journeys circle back to the place it started, only to discover something one couldn’t understand in the beginning,” Holshek wrote in his Facebook entry. “Joseph Campbell called this the “heroic cycle”- a going out, an illumination, and a return. That was the purpose of the journey at the start. Not to find answers as much to see if I was asking the right questions.” The trip not only closed a chapter, but was a way to re-examine national identity at personal and collective levels, by looking two fundamental questions:
1. What does it mean to be an American?
2. What does that mean for America, and for the rest of the world?
He believes that the fate of our nation in the 21st Century, and the fate of the world as we try to find our place, will depend on how we collectively answer – and act upon – these questions. These questions guide us to re-imagine America, it’s leadership role in the world, and envisage a roadmap to this future.
While the voyage of discovery that lasted from the 5th of May to the 23rd of June has ended, the voyage of reflections that hopefully will help inspire what he calls “The Great Conversation” on America and its place in the world continues. Col. (ret.) Holshek invites you to explore with him on his blog ‘Two Wheel and Two Questions.’ He welcomes your responses and commentary that will mark the way into this latest frontier.
Dear Col. Holshek,
I have read two of your blog posts and cited one here: http://www.allspotlight.net/article/slaughter_the_future_of_foreign_policy_is_public_private_partnerships?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter. When I read you I feel like I’m thinking aloud. See my column at The Altantic online — Notes from the Foreign Policy Frontier. Look forward to following you! And are you on Twitter? I couldn’t find you.
sincerely,
Anne-Marie S.