You Challenged the Wrong Soldier

He said he was considering using it as the opening segment of the advanced course orientation, before the first day's instruction began.

I said nothing for a moment.

Then I said, "Briggs didn't know what he was walking into."

Shaw said, "No."

"The students will know, watching it. They'll see it with the ending already visible."

Shaw nodded. "That's the point," he said. "The lesson isn't the technique. The lesson is that capable looks like a great many things, and most of the mistakes that cost people their lives come from deciding what capable looks like before the evidence is in."

I thought about that for the drive home.

I thought about it again the following Monday, standing in front of the first cohort of the advanced combatives curriculum, with the morning's program on the board behind me and three hundred hours of course material ahead.

Briggs was in the third row.

He had enrolled in the advanced course six days after the demonstration. The enrollment form had been processed through the standard channels. Shaw had approved it without comment.

I looked at the cohort. I looked at Briggs in the third row, sitting with his hands on his knees and his face carrying the specific neutrality of a man who has made a decision about who he intends to be in the next room he enters.

I said good morning.

I told them what the course was going to cover and what it was going to require and what the assessment criteria were and what the passing standard was.

Then I told them the first principle, which was the one I had been thinking about since Shaw's office.