Live Sealed

Does anybody know how the Navy SEALS live?

After you completed all of your training and are placed on a SEAL team do you get to go home often or do you have to be at one spot for an extended period of time?

Once a SEAL makes the teams, he’s pretty busy. Used to be that if the world was in a turmoil, as it is today, a guy would do a “tour” with one team, and the next with another… keeping him pretty active.

There is what’s called “down time.” That’s when training is kind of put on hold and the guys tend to “recreate.” For some, that means family and friends. For some that means… “enjoying life” each in his own way. A lot of the time they stick together pretty closely. First, they can’t talk much about what they did and where they went with family and friends. They can with their buddies… but with them, they don’t have to… their buddies know.

What do they do? Their tendency seems to be that whatever they’re doing involves physical activity… camping (with family or friends), hiking (with family or friends), swimming (with family or friends), working out (sometimes with family or friends). Most don’t seem to tend toward sedentary “pursuits” much.

In addition to occasional down time, the guys, like other military personnel, accrue thirty days of leave a year. They can spend that pretty much anyway they wish. Those with families tend to use it more than those without.

It takes a lot of dedication to be SEAL. And families of SEALs have to learn that’s pretty much where their loyalty lies. Sometimes when you’re “up”… especially when there’s trouble brewing somewhere, you can be tethered to your command by some communication device… guess today it’s cell or satellite phones, and when you get “the call”… you go.

Being SEAL is kind of solitary… or at least kind of removed from mainstream society. You do a lot of neat and exciting things… sometimes pretty hairy… and you can’t talk about them. Remember that kid who picked on you way back in elementary school? You have the means to look him up and let him know what you’ve accomplished and maybe give him back a little of what he gave you… but you can’t… even if you wanted to. Remember that teacher who warned you that you’d never amount to anything? You can’t go back to his or her class and remind him or her what you were told and what a difference you’re now making in the world. Remember that really hot chick that sat next to you in your math class… you know the one… the one who wouldn’t give you the time of day because you, being a nerd, were her social inferior? You can’t tell her either.

Because, sometimes, SEALs do stuff that was never done, and in places that nobody ever went, the only time they make the news is if a mission goes sour and the media find out about it.

You’ll see guys on this site who load their responses with references to their being SEAL and all the well-known SEALs with whom they served, their class number, etc… SEALs don’t do that either. Usually their information is copied out of a book, lifted from a movie or TV show, cut and pasted from some other site, or made up. For the most part, only the stuff cut and pasted is reasonably accurate. Some pretender posted, “Many are called. Few are chosen.” That’s inaccurate. “None are called. Many try anyway. Few make it.”

I don’t think the Navy actually “make” SEALs. I think the SEALs show up at Coronado… along with a bunch of other guys who are firmly convinced they’re SEAL material. The Navy first demonstrates to those in the second group that they’re sorely mistaken. Then, when they’re gone, the Navy trains the SEALs.

Stevie Wonder – Signed, Sealed, Deli.. – LIVE London Part 10