Be brave. Even if you are not brave, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference.
When I was nineteen, I jumped out of an airplane a couple of times. I am also a wee bit scared of heights, so it did take some courage. I do remember being scared shitless, sitting in the open door of a tiny Cessna with the wind screaming in my ear and every animal instinct demanding that I not let go. I suppose you could argue that it was less courage than peer pressure that got me out of the plane, because my other two buddies had already jumped and I wasn't about to wuss out.
Six years later, I found myself in a dusty street in Pampalona without any buddies. They had decided to just observe the running of the bulls, while I could not imagine coming all the way to the festival of San Fermin and not participating. However, I was not actually alone, as anyone who has ever run the bulls in Pamaplona will tell you. The street is jam packed with people. In fact it is so crowded that I never even saw a bull until the very end, yet I ran as fast and hard as I could when caught up in the panic of the crowd. There was no brave facing down El Toro.. just the madness of the crowd and the wild run of adrenaline. I suppose you could put that down to recklessness, rather than courage.
There have been other scrapes and stand offs and fear for personal safety.. the kind of thing that happens to most guys. Sometimes you are really scared and do your best not to show it (as my father told me: just pretend to be brave.. no one can tell the difference). Sometimes you just act in the heat of the moment, and then later pull your car over and shake uncontrollably for a few minutes while your mind and body relive what just happened.
There's a Mr. Death from the village..
And then there is the time when you have to face The Fear. It is the time when your realize that you are eventually going to die. Or when your realize that you have fewer years left to live than you have already lived. Or when someone you identify with dies. You feel The Fear. Your mortality. The ultimate pointlessness of your time on the planet. The end of everything. The Fear.
Unlike the adrenaline rush of dangerous situations, The Fear is endemic. It never goes away and it seems to get stronger every year. You wake up with it every morning, lurking in your thinning hair and stiff back and creaking joints. It can make you do some crazy ass things.. the stereotypical mid-life crisis is another manifestation of The Fear. I think men in general have a harder time of it because they generally are a lot more tight-arsed when it comes to showing deep emotions. We keep The Fear bottled up inside us, and refuse to speak of the thing so we don't have to acknowledge it.
I think this is where courage comes into play. Accepting the inevitable and persevering. Being determined to fight the good fight even though you will lose in the end. Maybe even using it as motivation to get more out of every day rather than just going through the motions.
I used to think that courage was not flinching in the face of danger. Now I know it is just living your life and managing Fear.
Shine on, brother.
