So I am a day away from the 1 month mark of this deployment, and I figured it's time for another update. Unfortunately, I have been living in a ground hog's day of sleep, workout, eat, work, eat, workout, sleep, repeat (in no particular order), so there hasn't been too much of interest to report.
However, as I was flipping channels last night The Great and Powerful Oz was on TV, which marks the third time I have run into this movie on deployment (first on the plane on the way over here, secondly when I was waiting in line for driver's training about a week after getting here, and third last night while laying in bed). It couldn't be a coincidence. So I got to thinking: maybe the Wizard of Oz is a metaphor for this deployment. After all, Dorothy was lifted up from her homeland and deposited in a strange land where there were many challenges and people that she had no idea how to deal with. Let's see if I can make this metaphor work.
Once upon a time, Dorothy was living in Kansas minding her own business. She had a quaint life with supportive family and friends. It was a boring life, and Dorothy didn't realize how good it was until she left. You see, Dorothy longed for adventure. Kansas was uneventful to say the least. Dorothy wanted to see the world and make a difference. She wanted to explore, experience, and change. While she certainly got her wish for a something different, Dorothy was wholly unprepared for the shock of the Land of Oz.
One day while Dorothy was sitting in Kansas daydreaming of distant lands, a tornado came and swept Dortohy into a storm which carried her to a land far, far away. While the initial storm wasn't too terrible, the storm eventually spit Dorothy out halfway across the world from her family and friends. As soon as Dorothy stepped into the heat of this new land, she knew she wasn't in Kansas anymore.
The first few days, even weeks, weren't too bad. It was a novel concept to explore Oz and see the many sites and sounds this new country had to offer. Plus, there were new people, some of them cute for Dorothy to meet and get to know. But soon Dorothy realized that many of the people in this bizarre land were strange and selfish. Some of them were simply homesick and hard to deal with, while others were downright evil. Dorothy was unprepared for the attitudes that started to come out of people after a few weeks of being stuck in Oz. It seemed that this country had a strange side effect on people: it brought out the worst in them.
So Dorothy took matters into her own hands. She talked to the Glenda the good witch and realized that in order to navigate the land of Oz, she just needed to follow the yellow brick road, and stay away from trouble. While in theory this seemed easy enough, it turns out that there are quite a few obstacles in Oz which make finding the way back home difficult..
First of all, there is the Wicked Witch of the West whose sole goal in life appears to be to pick on Dorothy and her companions while they traverse the yellow brick road. The wicked witch takes into account neither logic nor compassion when dealing with Dorothy and her friends. She guises her evil in the form of "developing" Dorothy to be a better professional, but it really just seems like the witch does everything in her power to belittle Dorothy and try to break her. For every step forward Dorothy takes on the yellow brick road, the witch pushes her two steps back. And there is no reasoning to be had with the wicked witch because she is much more powerful than Dorothy. So Dorothy is stuck in a pattern of trying to keep her head down in order to get further down the yellow brick road, while trying not to anger the wicked witch in the process.
In addition to the Wicked Witch of the West, the land of Oz also has another source of evil working against Dorothy and her companions: the great and powerful Oz. Luckily for Dorothy, she doesn't have too many interactions with Oz because she is stuck on the yellow brick road dealing with the Wicked Witch. However, many of her friends work directly for Oz and witness with his megalomania on a daily basis. Oz constantly belittles the poor munchkins that work for him, often firing them on a whim for nothing more than his own self gratification. Granted, some of the munchkins are not the sharpest tools in the shed, but they are TRYING and learning. No one deserves to be treated like they are meaningless. That's just bad leadership on the part of Oz. Not to mention, the poor munchkins are doing their best to survive and get by in the strange land of Oz without their families or friends.
As you can imagine this kind of toxic work environment in Oz, combined with the Wicked Witch of the West terrorizing the yellow brick road, makes the inhabitants of Oz none too happy with their plight. Some people aren't sure if they will ever find their way back home.
Luckily, Dorothy isn't alone in this strange land. She has many friends and companions to endure the trials of the land of Oz to include a tin man, a scarecrow, and a lion. Her friends at times may seem heartless, brainless, or cowardly, but they are all trying their best to navigate their way through Oz themselves. They get homesick, beaten down, and scared just as Dorothy herself experiences all of these qualities. But hopefully, through the trials that the group of them endure on the yellow brick road and in Oz, Dorothy and her friends will be able to overcome their weaknesses and find their way home a better person than when they got to Oz.
And that is as far as I've gotten in the story of Dorothy trying to navigate her way through Oz. Will she find her way through the yellow brick road and find her way home? Will the wicked witch or powerful Oz get the better of Dorothy and her friends? Tune in to find out more in the next episode of Dorthy deployed to the land of Oz...
