Transformed By A Bullet: From Marine To Peace Activist

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Psychology Today   |  Cecilia Capuzzi Simon   |   September 9, 2008 09:10 AM



When he was a young soldier fighting in the Vietnam War, says Bobby Muller, he was well on his way to becoming "an asshole, an arrogant, bad-ass Marine." Instead, at the age of 23, he was shot through the chest in battle and paralyzed.

On that day in 1969, Muller was sure he was not coming back. "This is key: I absolutely experienced dying," he says. "My last thoughts were, 'I'm gonna die. On this shitty piece of ground. I don't fucking believe it!' The aloneness of it, the finality of it, the irreversibility of it, I absolutely, completely got it."

He woke up on a hospital ship, shocked to be alive. The bad news that he would be paralyzed did not faze him; nor did the entreaties of a hospital psychologist to "cry to mourn the loss" of half his body.

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When he was a young soldier fighting in the Vietnam War, says Bobby Muller, he was well on his way to becoming "an asshole, an arrogant, bad-ass Marine." Instead, at the age of 23, he was shot through...
When he was a young soldier fighting in the Vietnam War, says Bobby Muller, he was well on his way to becoming "an asshole, an arrogant, bad-ass Marine." Instead, at the age of 23, he was shot through...
 
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I have nearly died several times in my life. Yet I am still here. It kinda makes you wonder why at times. Our lives are indeed a "flickering flame." Yet, to be part of the game, a part of the whole of manifestations, is what it's all about.

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 02:06 PM on 09/09/2008
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